


All Right, Princess

by wickersnap



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: ANH AU, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Canon - Book & Movie Combination, JKR shut up challenge, M/M, Magic is the Force, Movie: Star Wars: A New Hope, Multi, Star Wars typical violence, Trans Harry Potter, Trans Male Character, basically a rewrite but different and also george weasley says fuck, mutual crushes and pining, so everyone's at least a little Force-sensitive ig
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26632225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickersnap/pseuds/wickersnap
Summary: At a time in the not-too-distant past, in a galaxy a million parsecs away from what should be his own, Harry James Potter concedes that his life, as difficult and gruelling as it is, is a boring one.
Relationships: Harry Potter & George Weasley, Harry Potter/George Weasley, Hermione Granger & George Weasley, Hermione Granger & Harry Potter, Remus Lupin & Harry Potter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> So! This is a VERY self-indulgent A New Hope au for our favourite hp characters! (Maybe). The character swaps may seem a little strange but I definitely gave them all a lot of thought and tried my best. I hope it's fun!  
> Disclaimer: I didn't think I was going to post this at all, to be truly honest. I was about 40k in before JK decided she couldn't keep her mouth shut, but I thought I might as well go ahead and finish anyway. I had planned to do all of the OT _and_ the PT, having thought a lot of it through, but for JKR and motivation related reasons I don't really think I will end up doing the rest. I hate that she's ruined something that has brought an awful lot of people so much joy, but I also despise how she decided it a good idea to use her very considerable platform to attack me and my friends and our loving, peaceful, worldwide community so blatantly. My Harry in this story is trans, heavily based on the trans Luke headcanons (you know the ones. also george lucas go cry somewhere else). I hope it's satisfactory :)
> 
> Regardless of horrible people in the real world, please do enjoy :)

At a time in the not-too-distant past, in a galaxy a million parsecs away from what should be his own, Harry James Potter concedes that his life, as difficult and gruelling as it is, is a boring one. Terribly, terribly boring. So terribly so, in fact, that the changing of the few and far between Tatooine seasons is the only thing separating each year of his life from the rest.

Harry Potter is not an unusual child, yet nor is he terribly usual either. He is of average height, with skin of golden brown and hair of brown-faded black in a poor attempt to ward against the glaring desert suns. Behind his round, wire-framed glasses he possesses brilliant green eyes and what the other children call an ‘inner-world accent,’ all things he has been bullied mercilessly for throughout his years trawling produce on and off the farm. His accent is the exact same as his Aunt Petunia’s, his Uncle Vernon’s  _ and _ his cousin Dudley’s, though the reasons why the same children do not bully Dudley are ones Harry does not like to dwell on. He’s unsure of why they speak the way they do, though at the same time complacent enough to think that nineteen years is too late to attempt to change it.

What he truly yearns for, always has and always will, is a break from the monotony of moisture farming. Even if he doesn’t ever set foot off this death trap of a planet, he’d like to have one interesting adventure to his name that isn’t some ridiculous feat of flying down the same damn canyons they all have.

But regardless of what should and should not be, Harry Potter, at present, is in the middle of spirited conversation with his old and only friend, Neville Longbottom—a recent returnee of the esteemed Academy. In fact, the very same Academy Dudley had been shipped off to nearly three seasons ago. Harry and Neville wander together through the shade cast by the towering power station while Harry makes small gestures with his hands and smiles down at the sand.

“…And so I cut the engine power, shut down the afterburners, and dropped straight down through Flayer’s Chute,” he says. “It was tight—probably too tight, really—but I made it. Not even a scratch on the skyhopper.” He frowns, fingers curling protectively against his palms. “Uncle Vernon still grounded me when he found I’d taken it out again. Can’t get out for the rest of the season now, not if I don’t do all of my aunt’s chores on top of my own and Dudley’s old ones.” Not that Dudley had ever done his chores. He had much rather enjoyed foisting them all off on Harry and going to run with his mates. Harry had tried simply not doing them once; it had ended with abuse from all sides as Dudley had been (and still is) very much his aunt and uncle’s angel.

“You ought to take it easy, Harry,” says Neville. “You might be the hottest bush pilot this side of Mos Eisley, but those skyhoppers are rigged far too fast for tropospheric craft. It’s always been dangerous, but more and more I’m worrying about you ending up as just another oil stain on the side of a crumbling canyon wall.”

“And you’re one to talk,” Harry scoffs quietly. “Hop onto a few big, automated starships and you go all soft… You’re beginning to sound like my uncle.”

Neville grimaces. “Don’t wish that on me!”

Harry laughs and aims a swift kick at his ankles in retaliation for casting doubt upon his talents. Neville snorts and skips it easily, catching Harry’s shin between his legs and threatening to unbalance him with a simple twist. Once satisfied with Harry’s flustered hopping, Neville releases him and the expression on his face goes embarrassingly soft.

“I’ve missed you, you know.”

“Yeah, well,” Harry mumbles. “It hasn’t been the same since you left. It’s all…” He gazes out over the endless swell and tilt of barren sand that stretches out of town. “Quiet. But it’s always been quiet, I suppose.”

Neville swallows and grows quiet as he takes in the sight and sentiment. He understands. Of course he understands, he’s lived much the same life as Harry has (spare the incessant bullying) and has shared the same dreams and wants and wishes many a time over their simple campfires.

“Harry,” he says suddenly, glancing around them. “I didn’t just come to say goodbye and rub it in all your faces that I got into the Academy…” He considers his next words. He looks a little ill, to Harry, but then he’s blurting them out as if trying not to give himself the chance for second thoughts. “—But I want someone to know. I can’t tell my gran.”

“What is it, Nev?” Harry asks with concern. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about what’s been going on at the Academy—and—and other places. Rumours, loads of them, and strong ones too. I made some outsystem friends, right, and we all agreed about the way things are shifting.” Neville licks his lips and lowers his voice once again. “We said that when we reach the peripheral systems, we’re all going to jump ship and join the Alliance.”

Harry can’t really help himself after an admission like that: he gapes.

“You’re going to join the Rebellion?” he hisses. “You’re joking! How?”

“A friend of mine from the Academy has a friend on Bestine that says they know how to get us into contact with an armed rebel unit,” Neville whispers back.

“A friend of a—You’re mental,” Harry tells him. He jerks upright and glares Neville straight down. Or up, as he at least stands half a foot taller than Harry. “You’re going to be killed. You could wander around forever and still never find a rebel outpost, most of them are myths! You could—you could be being set up! They could be an Imperial agent, and then you’d be sent to Kessel, or—or worse! If these outposts were so easy to find the Empire’d have wiped them out years ago!”

“I know it’s a long shot, but I have to try,” Neville insists. His eyes practically plead with Harry to understand. “It’s… You don’t know what they’re saying. I’m not going to sit around and let the Empire conscript me into their war machine. In spite of whatever you’re hearing on the official channels the Rebellion is growing, it’s gaining more momentum than ever. I want to be on the right side, Harry. The side I believe in. The Empire may have been great once, but it’s rotten now. Rotten to the core.”

“And I’m stuck here…” Harry grumbles, toeing the sand.

“I thought you were going to enter the Academy?” Neville says questioningly. “If that’s so, it’ll be your ticket off this sandpile.”   
“Not likely,” Harry sighs. “I had to withdraw my application.” He ignores his friend’s look of pain and pity and kicks at a stone. “I had to, Nev. The sandpeople have been so restless lately, they’ve even started raiding the outskirts of Anchorhead.”

Neville frowns. “Your uncle could hold off a whole troupe with one blaster.”

“From the house, maybe. He’s bought a whole new lot of vaporators, you see. He says it’s finally making the payoff. He can’t hold them off so much land on his own…”

“He’s not letting you go, is he?” Neville asks carefully. Harry keeps his grim stare focused on the sands beneath his boots and nods.  _ “Damn _ it! That blasted man!”

Harry can’t even find it within himself to force a laugh at his friend’s frustration. He smiles weakly at his feet and makes a concerted effort to will away the sinking sands of helplessness rising around him.

“I wish I was going with you,” he manages. “Will you be here long?”

“No, actually,” Neville sighs. “I’m due to leave in the morning and rendezvous with the  _ Ecliptic.” _

“Oh,” Harry says, looking up and managing another, slightly more wobbly smile. “I guess… I won’t be seeing you again, then.”

“Someday!” Neville declares with a gusting intake of breath. “Someday you’ll get off this kriffing rock and do some good in the galaxy, I just know it. I’ll keep a lookout for you, so try not to run into any canyon walls in the meantime, okay?”

“Okay,” Harry replies. “Make sure you, uh, make sure you take care of yourself, okay? You’ll always be the best friend I have.”

With almost no warning, Neville sweeps him up into a crushing hug. “Take care, Harry,” he says, and turns and walks back into the power station. Harry is left, alone on the abandoned street, to weather the tormentuous storms of his thoughts in his wake.

*** * ***

“Potter!” comes a shrieking yell from the house.  _ “Potter!” _

Harry hangs his head and turns around, jogging back to the ridge of the subterranean courtyard. “Yes, Aunt Petunia?”

A tall, thin woman with a face like a horse’s peers up at him, her top lip curled in a permanent snarl. “If you’re getting a translator then make sure it speaks Bocce, boy.”

Harry presses his lips together and glances back over his shoulder at the array of droids the jawas are lining up. “I’ll try my best. There’s not much of a selection.”

“Well make sure you do it right,” his aunt snaps. “Go on, get to it.”

Harry sighs beneath his breath and makes his way back over to where his uncle is shouting at the jawas. He creeps very slowly up to his uncle’s side, highly unwilling. When Vernon finally decides to look at the droids, Harry steps up beside him. 

“Aunt Petunia says to get one that speaks Bocce,” he says quietly.

“You!” his uncle grunts at the golden-plated protocol droid he’s interrogating. “Do you speak Bocce?”

“Of course, sir,” replies the droid. “It’s like a second language to me. I’m as fluent in Bocce as—”

“All right, shut up,” Uncle Vernon growls. “I’ll have this one too.”

“Shutting up, sir,” says the protocol droid. 

“Take these down to the garage, boy, and get them cleaned up before dinner.”

“Yes, Uncle Vernon,” Harry says. He turns and leads the golden protocol droid and the agricultural robot across the sand, followed by an intense beeping. Harry looks behind him just in time to see a blue and white astromech be subdued by one of the worker jawas. He peers curiously at it and its enthusiasm before continuing on his way, but not a minute later he’s disturbed again by a loud hiss and a pinging of metal. A plate on the head of the agricultural bot has flown off and away into the sand, revealing the whirring contents of its insides and a billowing stream of smoke.

“Uncle Vernon!” he yelps, hurrying to the bot. “Uncle Vernon, this one has a bad motivator!”

Harry reaches inside the droid and yelps again when the component in question burns the tips of his fingers. He draws his hand back and looks worriedly over at his uncle, who has begun berating the jawas once again.

“What kind of rubbish are you trying to push on us!” he bellows. “I will not stand for this!”

“Sir, if I may,” says the golden protocol droid to Harry. 

“Yes?”

“That Artoo unit over there is a real bargain,” the droid tells him. “He’s in top condition—I don’t believe those creatures have any idea of how good a shape he’s really in. Don’t let all the sand and dust deceive you.”

Harry chews on his bottom lip and considers the little subdued astromech the droid points to. “Uncle Vernon!” he calls on impulse. “Can’t they swap that one for this?”

Vernon growls again and continues his tirade against the jawas, but even he knows that when pushed too far the filthy creatures may be liable to crushing the whole farm beneath the tracks of their sandcrawler. After a minute or so of grumbling he suggests the trade and begins negotiating a deal with the lead jawa. Two other jawas rush forward to collect the faulty agricultural robot and the astromech whistles gleefully. He waddles forward to join Harry and the protocol droid and beeps in a quick, staccato sequence. Harry sighs and waves the droids towards the house. 

“Come on, I have to get you clean before my uncle threatens to scrap me instead.”

The three make their way towards a hole in the ground not far from the house’s domed entrance. Down the ramp they descend, the metal swept clean of sand by a number of electrostatic repellers. Harry can hear the protocol droid muttering in a tinny voice behind him, but he pays little notice. The garage proper widens out in front of them, displaying a number of farm machines, scattered tools, a landspeeder and a skyhopper, and a large, half-sunken tub in one corner. He glances back in amusement at the protocol droid’s sound of interest.

“Yeah,” he grins, “it’s a lubrication bath. You could do with about a week in there, but we can’t afford that so you’ll have to make do with one afternoon. Uncle Vernon needs you to get to work soon anyway.”

He kneels down beside the astromech rolling this way and that between worn and broken machinery. He flips open a hatch and frowns inside. “I don’t know how  _ you’re _ even still going,” he says. “Not to say I’m surprised… But it’s recharge time for you.” He points to the station on the other side of the lubrication bath and smiles when the astromech jiggles on his rotors and trundles off to plug himself in. Across from him the protocol droid lets out a staticky sigh as he steps into the tub and submerges himself.

“You two be good,” Harry warns. “I have work of my own to see to, and my uncle won’t be happy if anything goes wrong while I’m busy.”

If the protocol droid replies, he doesn’t hear it. His mind is already straying back to his farewell conversation with Neville and the plans his friend was making. He’s so distracted by his thoughts that it takes nearly twice as long for him to finish up his chores, and by the time he comes back to himself he’s sitting slumped back in the garage and sliding a large wrench between his fingers. 

“It’s not fair!” he abruptly decides, flinging the wrench across the room. It pings off the wall and clatters noisily on the ground. “Nev’s right… He’s out planning rebellion against the Empire, and here  _ I _ am stuck on this godforsaken farm.”

“Pardon me, sir.”

Harry jumps hard enough that he smacks his head on the underside of the speeder. He hisses and slaps a hand to the sore spot, looking up at the tall protocol droid in front of him. The lubrication bath seems to have made a whole world of difference; what had looked like brushed gold plating had in reality just been incredibly scuffed and dusty, and now he stands gleaming and glinting in the dim light. His joints also move and extend smoothly and without the faint grinding noise Harry hadn’t really noticed had been there.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” the droid asks.

“I don’t think so,” Harry replies grimly. He drops his gaze back to the floor. “Unless you can teleport me off this rock and away from my aunt and uncle, I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“I don’t think so, sir,” replies the droid. “I’m only a third-degree droid and not particularly knowledgeable about such things as transatomic physics.” Harry snorts, feeling the corners of his lips quirk up in a sardonic smile. “As a matter of fact, sir, I’m not even sure which planet we’re on.”

Harry frowns up at the droid. He’s looking curiously around the garage and at the speeder as though any one thing might give him the clue he’s looking for.

“Well,” he replies, “if there’s a bright centre to this universe you’ve found the planet that it’s farthest from.”

“I see, sir.”

“There’s no need to call me ‘sir,’” Harry says quickly. “I’m just Harry, and this is Tatooine.”

The droid nods once. “Thank you, Harry, si—Harry. I am See-Threepio, human-cyborg relations.” With one arm extended, See-Threepio turns his torso to indicate the astromech on the charging pad. “This is Artoo-Detoo, my companion.”

“Nice to meet you, See-Threepio,” Harry says. “And you, Artoo-Detoo.” He heaves himself off the floor and wanders over to Artoo. The little gauge on his front blinks satisfyingly and he crouches to remove the charging cables, but when his eyes come level with the droid’s outer casing he notices a large number of score marks dashed across its surface and dug inside its crevices.

“Is something wrong, Harry?” Threepio asks when Harry gets to his feet to retrieve his carbon pick from the bench.

“I don’t know…” he replies absently. He takes his tool to Artoo’s scarred plating and begins to work, ducking and dodging the shards of corrosion that come flying off towards him. “There’s a lot of carbon scoring here, but it’s a type I’ve not seen before. It looks like you’ve both seen a lot of interesting action lately.”

“Indeed, sir,” Threepio admits. Harry isn’t paying enough attention to correct his slip of the processor. “Sometimes, I’m amazed we’re in such good shape as we are… What with the Rebellion and all…”

Harry fumbles his pick and almost slices into his hand as he whips around to look at Threepio. “You know about the Rebellion against the Empire?” he asks fervently. The droid appears to startle at his sudden outburst.

“In a way,” Threepio says, though he sounds reluctant. “The Rebellion is responsible for us coming to be in your service—we’re refugees, you see.”

“Refugees!” Harry exclaims. “So I  _ did _ see a space battle! Tell me about it—tell me where you’ve been! Is the Rebellion still going? Is the Empire treating it seriously?”

“Please, sir, do slow down,” Threepio says sheepishly. “You misunderstand our involvement; we were innocent bystanders, really, and our involvement was mere happenstance.

“As to battles, I think we may have been in several. It is difficult, you see, to keep track when one is not handling the machinery oneself. Beyond that, there is not much to say. You must remember that I am only an embellished and cosmeticised interpreter, and not very good at relating tales or histories. I am a very literal machine.”

Harry sighs and turns back to his work on Artoo. His scraping continues for a couple of minutes before he notices a slight protrusion from the casing. A small metal shard appears to have embedded itself tightly between two bar conduits that would, otherwise, be used to form a linkage. Harry frowns and swaps his delicate pick for something a bit larger.

“Okay, you,” he says. “You’ve something stuck quite tight in here. I’m just gonna take it out, okay?”

Harry uses the tool to push and pry, grimacing with the effort as the sharp shard does not seem to want to budge. He adjusts his grip and position and leans a lot of his weight into it while simultaneously trying to steady Artoo. A powerful  _ crack! _ echoes through the room and Harry sprawls flat on his face with a shout—the metal had given way and gone flying across the garage.

Sighing and in the middle of picking himself up, Harry freezes. The small, previously dark viewpiece on the front of Artoo’s metal dome has lit up a glowing turquoise-blue. On the floor several feet away forms an image no taller than eight inches, and Harry finds his breath has caught and held itself in his chest with reverence. 

Despite the artificial sharpness of the capture, the image shudders and flickers. Harry thinks it probable that the recording was taken in a hurry. The blueish, dark face of a beautiful girl with frizzy braided hair looks around nervously before returning to the recording device, and her lips begin to move.

“Help me, Remus Lupin,” she says—or appears to say, as Harry knows the sound he hears is issuing from somewhere in Artoo’s torso. “You’re my only hope.”

The image fizzles and skips, and the figure looks around again. “Help me, Remus Lupin. You’re my only hope.”

“What is this?” Harry asks breathlessly as they watch the recording loop. Artoo beeps too quickly for him to really catch.

“What do you mean, ‘what is what?’” Threepio demands. “He asked you a question! What is this!” Artoo swivels his domed head from side to side and whistles something to Threepio. “Oh, don’t worry about it sir—Harry. He says it’s just a malfunction. Old data. Pay it no mind.”

“Who is she?” Harry asks, creeping closer to the projection in a crouch. “She’s… beautiful, I suppose.”

“I’m afraid I’m not quite sure, sir…”

“Help me Remus Lupin…” she continues to plead.

“I think she may have been a passenger on our last voyage,” Threepio says. “A person of some importance, or so I believe.”

“Is there more to this?” Harry asks. He turns to Artoo and reaches out, but jumps and stops short when the droid lets out a shrill series of frightened-sounding beeps.

“Oh, do behave yourself, Artoo!” Threepio tuts. “You’re going to get us in trouble. Harry is our master now, you can trust him.” Artoo whistles lowly and continues to beep. “Why… He says he’s the property of a Remus Lupin, a supposed resident of these parts. He says it’s a private message for him. Frankly, sir, I don’t know what he’s talking about; our last master was Captain Antilles. With what we’ve been through I’m not sure this Artoo unit hasn’t become a bit eccentric.”

“Remus Lupin?” Harry says. “He can’t mean Old John Lupin, can he? My uncle calls him Loony John…”

“I beg your pardon, sir Harry? Do you know who he might be talking about?”

“Well, I don’t know anyone called  _ Remus, _ but Old John lives out on the edge of the Western Dune Sea. He’s a sort of hermit. Some people say he’s a sorcerer of some kind.” Harry turns his attention back to the beautiful girl. He watches the way her white robe sways with her motions, the way her hood drapes from the top of her head. “She sounds like she’s in trouble… We’d better play the whole thing, Artoo.”

Artoo whistles again.

“He says the restraining bolt has short-circuited his recording system,” Threepio translates almost dryly. “He suggests that if you remove the bolt he may be able to play you the whole recording.”

“I suppose,” Harry says. He snatches up a wrench and pops the bolt off the side of Artoo’s body, but the light of the hologram vanishes. “Hold on, where’d she go? Artoo, play the recording!”

“‘What message?’ You’re the one carrying it inside those rusty innards!” Threepio scolds. He brings his fist down atop Artoo’s domed head with a clang. 

“Potter!” shrills Aunt Petunia from above. “Potter, you ungrateful brat! Your food is ready!”

“I’m coming!” Harry says, jolting to his feet. He tosses the wrench aside and heads for the door.

“I’m sorry, Master Harry, but he appears to have picked up a slight flutter.”

“Er,” Harry says. He pauses in the doorway. “See what you can do with him. I’ll have to come back later…” 

With that, he hurries from the garage and up to his aunt and uncle’s dining room. With all of his distraction today, the last thing he needs is another intrigue to think about.

*** * ***

Harry sits at the edge of the subterranean courtyard, his legs dangling carelessly into the silo. In front of him the twin suns of Tatooine are dipping below the sand-ridged horizon. They bathe the land in swathes of russet and pink-gold that roll like flame down the dunes. His white tunic and britches are greying with the day’s dust, not to say anything for his boots. Even his chest wrap is yellowed from his dried sweat.

Soon, for the first time, the sands in front of him will be bustling with food plants. The monotonous yellow will become a veritable forest of green. Yet Harry can’t dredge up anything more than a creeping feeling of dread in response.

He looks up to the sky and the sunset and thinks of Neville. He hopes, beyond all hope, that he somehow makes it into the Alliance alive. Anything else doesn’t really bear thinking about.

Eventually the suns slip out of sight, bringing the night’s cold sweeping in from the east. With the discomfort of his hastily scarfed-down meal Harry makes his way back to the garage in the hopes that some good tinkering will help keep his mind off at least something. When he gets down there he’s greeted by silence and stillness and neither of the new droids in sight. With a frown he grabs a remote and switches one of its buttons.

“Oh!” comes a surprised yelp from over behind the speeder. Threepio leaps up into sight and stumbles back onto the main floor.

“Why on Tatooine are you hiding back there?” Harry asks, bemused. He realises in the same moment that Artoo has not made an appearance, despite the remote summoner, but is saved from the need to ask by the babbling his companion spews forth.

“It wasn’t my fault, sir,  _ please _ don’t deactivate me!” Threepio begs. “I told him not to go, but he’s faulty! Malfunctioning! He kept babbling on about a mission of some sort!”

“Oh no,” Harry whispers. “And I removed the restraining bolt myself…”

Snatching up his uncle’s old, precious macrobinoculars from a nearby worktable Harry dashes back outside. He stumbles up to the small ridge several dozen feet from the house and scans the horizon, taking advantage of the only highground the farm has to offer. Beside him, Threepio fights his way over the sand to join the hunt. 

“Oh, that Artoo unit has caused nothing but trouble,” he bemoans. “Astromech droids are becoming too iconoclastic for even me to understand these days.”

“How could I be so stupid,” Harry mutters angrily. He finally lowers the macrobinoculars and instead buries his face in his hands. “My uncle’s going to kill me— _ actually _ kill me this time. He’ll string me up for the sandpeople, Threepio.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but can’t we go after him?”

Harry sighs. “No, not at night. We’d get turned around thrice over the moment the farm’s out of sight. I don’t care much about the jawas and raiders, but what good is it going after him if we end up drowning in the sinking pits?”

“I see, sir…”

“Potter!” bellows Aunt Petunia once again. “Turn the power off already, boy!”

“Coming, Aunt Petunia!” Harry replies. He lifts his face from his hands and turns back towards the homestead. “Come on, Threepio. We’ll have to wait until morning.”

“Affirmative, Harry.”

*** * ***

As promised, the next morning sees Harry waking before dawn and loading himself and Threepio into the speeder. He brings with them his rifle, the droid remote and the macrobinoculars and sets off towards the western dunes. By the time the suns have risen above the horizon at their backs the temperature has already soared, beating down on the back of Harry’s neck and head. Sweat is seeping into his chest wrappings again and he shifts uncomfortably in his seat, still off-put by the suffocating swelter and compression even after so many years. Grit and sand puff up into a hazy fog beneath the landspeeder’s beating repulsors. Harry leans back in unaccustomed luxury as Threepio expertly navigates the speeder around outcroppings and steep changes in landscape.

“You handle a speeder very well, Threepio,” he observes. 

“Thank you,” Threepio replies. “I was not lying to your uncle when I claimed versatility as my middle name. In fact, there have been multiple occasions on which I have been called upon to perform tasks that would appall my designer.”

Harry does not quite know how to respond to that, so he decides not to. “Old John lives out here somewhere—no one knows  _ quite _ where—but I don’t see how that little droid could make it all the way here in one night… We must have missed him back in the dunes… Uncle Vernon is going to be livid.”

“If it would help, sir, might I take the blame for this?”

“Oh, sure,” Harry laughs gently. “He needs you all the more now, so I suppose he’d only deactivate you for a day or two. Probably do a partial memory flush too.”

“D-Deactivate?” Threepio echoes. “Memory flush? In that case, maybe not…”

Harry’s eyes flick back down to the scanner on the dash, the one he’s been staring at for so long he thinks he might have burnt the flickering green permanently onto the backs of his eyes. This time, however, he almost chokes on his surprise when he notices the larger-than-scrap blip on the panel.

“Wait a minute, there’s something on the scanner,” he says, shooting forward in his seat. “Dead ahead. We’re too far away to see its shape, but I think that could be him… Put your foot down, Threepio, and maybe we’ll have him back before midday.”

The speeder gives a lurch as Threepio engages the accelerator with enthusiasm and jumps them forward. Harry flops back into his seat (winded, just a little) and splits his focus between the landscape past the windscreen and the metal scanner on the dash. It’s not many minutes later that they close in on a canyon up ahead and Harry gives a relieved sigh. 

“It’s him, Threepio,” he says. “Come around in front of him, will you?”

“With pleasure, sir,” Threepio says. The speeder zips over the uneven ground at the bottom of the canyon and past a conspicuous foreigner, Artoo the blue-and-white astromech. Artoo does not seem to be putting up much of a fight, having stopped where he is and swivelling his head to watch the speeder whip by and take a sharp turn. A small cloud of dust coughs up behind them and Harry takes a long, cautious look around while Threepio parks and cuts the engine. 

The coast is clear, for the moment, so Harry leaps over the side of the speeder and comes to stand in front of their escapee.

“And where did you think you were going?” he asks Artoo. “Do you know how much trouble I’ll be in having to come and find you?”

Artoo issues a feeble whistle and a couple of recalcitrant beeps, but before he truly knows what’s going on Harry finds Threepio rather than Artoo doing most of the talking.

“Master Harry is your rightful owner now! We'll have no more of this ‘Remus Lupin’ gibberish… And don't talk to me about your mission, either; you're fortunate he doesn't blast you into a million pieces right here!”

“Not likely,” Harry grouses. He must admit, he had not expected such ferocity in Threepio’s scolding. “Anyway, come on, it’s getting late. We should get back before Uncle Vernon really blows his top…” 

“If I may, sir, I think you ought to deactivate this little miscreant until you’ve gotten him back to the workshop.”

“No, no,” Harry says. “I think he’s all right. He’s not going to try anything now, are you?”

And right on cue, Artoo jumps in fright and begins whistling wildly, wobbling back and forth on his rotors.

Harry sighs. “What’s wrong  _ now?” _

But Threepio is now looking around rather nervously, and it sets him immediately on guard. 

“Oh my,” Threepio says. “Sir, he claims that there are several unknown creatures approaching from the southeast.”

“Sandpeople,” Harry curses. He bounds up to the speeder and retrieves his rifle. “Or worse, maybe. I’ve never been this far from the farm before, and there are lots of weird and unknown things out here… It could even be something new.” Settling on his stomach just below the top of a ridge, Harry slants the macrobinoculars over his eyes and scans what he can see of the other end of the canyon. Two colossal banthas slide into view stationed just at the mouth of the rock.

“Banthas,” he says for Threepio’s benefit. “They’re sandpeople all right, but I don’t see any… Oh, there’s one…”

He tracks the shambling path of a raider emerging from behind one of their rides. Faster than blinking, a dark shadow sweeps its way over the lens of the binoculars and Harry is startled half to death by a deafening hoarse bellow that comes from much closer than anticipated. 

The binoculars drop from his hands as he topples backwards in fright and goes careening down the side of the ridge. Above him he can see the wrapped, hulking form of a sandperson pumping their gaderffii (a menacing double-edged ax blade that has struck fear into the hearts of many a human coloniser) above their head in a kind of battle cry before leaping down the ridge and racing after Harry’s frantic scrabbling. Vaguely he’s aware of Threepio’s catastrophic tumble down the dune, but he doesn’t have half a though to spare for it as the gaderffii is brought down almost on his head; he raises his rifle above him more on instinct than any self-preservation or fighting spirit. It shatters in half but, vitally, keeps the gaderffii from splitting his skull open on the sands. 

Harry drops the shards of his weapon and shuffles backwards as fast as he can. Putting a few feet between himself and the raider, one of his hands meets no resistance as it reaches back and plummets down into nothingness. Harry’s breath is forced from his lungs in a gasp and a piercing skip of his heart when his back hits stone, suddenly finding himself tilting over the edge of a tall, sheer crevasse. The hand that remains clinging to the rock of the ledge scrabbles for purchase that can pull his wilting head and shoulders out from the terrifying precipice. 

At the same time he digs his heels in and  _ pulls, _ Harry manages to haul himself back up. He gasps for breath and shuffles away from the rift on weak, trembling arms. The raider is pacing before him and making an approximation of a chuckling noise, absolutely shredded by the sand filter over its mouth. 

With his heart pumping with painful ferocity, the pounding rush of blood through his ears and the terribly disorienting ringing in his head, the last thing Harry truly remembers is a horrible laugh, a brandishing of a gaderffii, and the dull thunk of his head dropping down to meet the canyon rock.

*** * ***

Harry blinks awake in a shock of adrenaline. Above him hovers the face of an aging man, pale and with neat moustache and kindly smile.

“What happened?” he blurts before he can think any better of it. 

“Easy,” says the stranger, placing a firm but gentle hand on Harry’s chest as he struggles to sit up. “Easy, now.”

Harry stops and slowly eases himself back down to the ground, all the while eying the stranger with caution. His glasses are pressed into his hand and he shoves them hastily onto his nose.

“You’ve had an exciting day,” the stranger remarks. “I think you ought to count yourself lucky that your head is still attached to your shoulders, let alone in one piece.”

Right away, one point of interest leaps out at Harry: the stranger’s accent. Like his own, it’s worlds away from seemingly everyone else on Tatooine, and so very hard to miss. Unlike his own, however, it possesses a softer lilt and a honeyed tone that soothes the portion of Harry’s brain hardwired to susceptibility to suspicion and doubt. Harry tries to steady his breathing as he surveys the stranger—the stranger who has somehow procured a stick of sugarbeet without Harry even noticing.

“Eat,” the man says, extending the sugarbeet to Harry. “You’ll feel better.”

Harry takes the beet but does not bring it to his mouth, instead continuing to watch the man with interest. He has a short curling growth of greying brownish hair, a wealth of weariness worn into the lines around his eyes, and a rather eclectic layering of shabby brown robes and cloak. Around his waist is a wide utility belt to which two pouches and a long metal cylinder are clipped.

“John?” Harry asks. A wavering recognition ebbs somewhere in his mind’s eye. “John Lupin?”

“That I am,” Lupin confirms with a smile. “Go on, eat. I haven’t poisoned it, you know.”

Harry raises the beet to his mouth and crunches down. Sweetness and moisture flood over his tongue and bring a small smile of gratitude to his lips. 

“Lupin, you’ve no idea how glad I am to see you,” he says.

“The Jundland wastes are not to be travelled lightly,” Lupin says, rising to his feet and surveying the canyon. “It is a fool’s game to tempt the hospitality of the raiders… Tell me, young man, what brings you out here today?”

Harry sits up and looks around him with urgency. When his eyes come to rest on Artoo nearby he feels his shoulders slump and a small sigh escape his parted lips. “That little droid,” he says, gesturing with his half-eaten sugarbeet. “I thought he was faulty, saying he was looking for his former master, but I’ve never seen such devotion in a droid before. He even tricked me into helping free him.” Harry peers up into Lupin’s face as he tells him the next part. “He claims to be the property of someone called Remus Lupin. Is he a relative of yours?”

A short series of tiny, fleeting expressions flicker across Lupin’s face. “Remus Lupin,” he repeats. “Remus… It’s a name I haven’t heard in an awfully long time, I’ll give you that.”

“So you know him?” Harry asks, suddenly feeling energetic enough to jump to his feet. “Can you take us to him?”

“Do I know him?” Lupin laughs. “Yes, yes I know him. Remus Lupin is none other than myself, in fact.” Lupin gives a shallow bow of his head that nonetheless sets his robes flowing around his legs. “Remus John Lupin, at your service.”

“Blimey,” Harry says. “Really?  _ You’re _ Remus Lupin?”

“Do you meet many people with a name like mine, Harry?”

Harry rolls his eyes. “Wait, how do you know who I am?”

“I know many things,” Remus replies. It’s not very helpful.

“So, does this droid belong to you?” Harry asks instead. Remus crouches in front of Artoo and a soft smile steals its way onto his face.

“It’s been a very long time since I last saw you, Artoo,” he murmurs. “No, he doesn’t belong to me. He belonged to an old friend. My own droid perished rather unfortunately.”

“I’m… sorry,” Harry says. “Then, if he doesn’t belong to you, why does he say he does?”

“Maybe he considers myself his new master,” Remus suggests. He straightens and turns back to Harry. “I can’t tell you why, other than that Artoo was dreadfully loyal to his previous master.”

Harry frowns and nods. “I suppose that makes sense.”

A moment of quiet descends over the canyon. A weak wind blows sand over Harry’s boots and Remus’ robes ruffle as he moves. 

“Come,” he says. “We should get indoors as quickly as possible. The sandpeople are easily startled, but I have no doubt they’ll be back, and in much greater numbers.”

Harry shoves the remaining sugarbeet (having covered his hands in stickiness) into his mouth and makes a futile attempt at brushing down his clothes. Beside Remus, Artoo lets out a pitiful whine.

“Threepio!” Harry gasps. He rushes down the side of the ridge the raider had appeared over. There lying atop the sand is a scratched and buffeted golden arm, and another few feet away the rest of Threepio’s body half-submerged in the dune. Kneeling beside the droid Harry reaches out and shakes his shoulders gently, though the rational part of his mind is quite aware that this can do nought but possibly damage him further. With a muttered growl he flips the droid over and prises open a hatch, shoving his hand in and flipping a switch thrice in quick succession. After two starts of a humming motor Threepio’s ocular units light up golden once again.

“Where… am I?” Threepio murmurs. On squealing motors his head turns this way and that, taking in the scene. His gaze lands on Harry and he jolts in place. “Goodness! I must have taken a bad step.”

“You’re lucky all your circuits are still closed,” Harry huffs. “Come on, can you stand? We need to get out of here before the sandpeople get back.”

Threepio makes a gargantuan effort to get to his feet. Every single one of his servos screeches in protest, and he’s forced to sit back on his metal arse with little ceremony.

“I don’t think I can make it,” he announces. His synthetic voice is laced with despair. “You go on, Master Harry. It doesn’t make sense to risk yourself on my account. I’m finished.”

“No you’re not,” Harry says sharply. “What kind of talk is that?”   
“Logical,” Threepio answers.

“Defeatist,” Harry counters. He and Remus each take a side and haul Threepio out of his sandpit. Collecting the lost arm on the way, they struggle back to the part-gutted speeder the sandpeople had thankfully not quite managed to tear apart. Artoo beeps and hums happily when Threepio is plonked next to him in the back seat and Harry takes to the driver’s seat.

“Where to, sir?” Harry asks.

“Oh, you’ll know,” Remus replies.

With a deep breath and a hastily patched patience, Harry starts the engine and guides the speeder towards the taunting mouth of the canyon. Can today get any weirder? Any more frustrating? Seeing as he may very well be walking into even more danger, voicing such thoughts aloud could just be the last stupid decision he ever makes on this rock. So Harry keeps his mouth shut and his eyes fixed on the landscape ahead and doesn’t bother asking any more questions.


	2. II

The insides of Remus Lupin’s cavern of a home are a sweet relief from the heat of two suns nearing midday. The decor is sparse and minimalistic without being overtly uncomfortable, though seems to cater more for the health of the mind than the body.

They had successfully escaped a second attack by the Tusken Raiders with Harry’s expert maneuverability and Lupin’s quick-thinking. At his behest, Harry had laid out a trail behind them so perverse that not even the most experienced of jawas could have followed it. On arriving at Lupin’s home Harry had been directed to a compact but surprisingly complete repair shop in one corner, at which he is currently mending Threepio’s severed arm. Fortunately for all of them, the arm’s automatic overload sensors had kicked in the moment the shearing had commenced, sealing off all of its electronic nerves and ganglia before any damage could be done. If the break had occurred mid-‘bone’ then the repairs would have been an awful lot more complicated than just a reattachment job, though the design of the part has obviously taken such circumstances into account.

In the middle of the living area, Lupin’s attentions are similarly focused on the old astromech. Artoo sits happily while Remus tinkers about with his insides, beeping this or that in response to murmured questions. With a small noise of satisfaction Remus sits back on a nearby stool and flips Artoo’s panels closed. Artoo whistles and swivels his head, drawing Harry’s attention and prompting him to down-tools and join them.

“Let’s see what you have for me, old friend,” Remus says quietly.

“I saw part of the message, but not much,” Harry admits. He lowers himself onto a sturdy crate next to Threepio. Once more the striking blue hologram projects into the empty space in front of Artoo.

“I think that’s done it,” Remus says. The image continues to flicker and shiver, but this time Harry finds it sharper and better defined. With small admiration for Lupin’s handiness, he leans forward to better study the young girl.

“General Remus Lupin,” the girl says. “I present myself in the name of the world family of Alderaan and the Alliance to Restore the Republic. I interrupt your solitude only at the request of my father, Bail Organa, Viceroy and First Chairman of the Alderaan system.

“Years ago, you served the Old Republic and my father in the Clone Wars and struggle against the Empire. Now he begs of you to aid us again in our most desperate hour. He would have you join him on Alderaan, and for this I insist you  _ must _ go to him.

“I regret that I am unable to present my father’s request to you in person. My ship has fallen under attack and my mission to meet personally with you has failed, hence I have resorted to a secondary form of communication in my best attempt to reach you. Information vital to the survival of the Alliance has been secured in the memory systems of this Artoo unit; my father will know how to retrieve it, and so I plead with you to see it safely returned to Alderaan.”

The girl pauses and looks around herself, and the image does not skip. When she returns to the droid her words are more hurried and less formal. “You  _ must _ help me, Remus Lupin. You’re my only hope. I am to be captured by agents of the Empire, but they will learn nothing from me. Everything to be learned lies locked in the memory of this droid. Do not fail us, Remus Lupin. Do not fail  _ me.” _

With that, the girl reaches forward and her image fizzes and dies. Artoo gazes up at Lupin expectantly.

“General Lupin…” Harry breathes. “You—you fought in the clone wars? But that was ages ago!”

“Er, I suppose so, yes,” Remus replies. “It wasn’t as long ago as you probably feel. I was a Jedi knight, back then.”

“A Jedi!” Harry exclaims. “I thought they were legends!”

“I suppose your aunt and uncle have done their utmost to keep the old war holos away from you,” the old general grouses. He sighs and rubs a hand over his suddenly tired face before looking Harry gently in the eye. “Harry, has anyone ever told you that you have your mother’s eyes?”

“My—” Harry can hardly believe his ears. Only this morning was he wondering how anything could be weirder than what he’s already seen, yet in the last five minutes alone he’s heard enough to more than blow his previous revelations right out of the sand. “My mother?” he asks with barely-restrained caution. “You knew my mother?”

“I more than knew her,” Remus smiles. “I knew both your parents. Dear friends of mine, they were… The dearest. One a prominent politician, the other a Jedi knight and general just as I was. You look just like your father, Harry, and yet you have your mother’s eyes.”

“A Jedi?” Harry echoes. “A politician? But—but my uncle said they were nothing! Just poor workers on some spice freighter!”

Remus’ smile turns sad. “You aunt never did forgive your mother when she left. It was a child’s grudge that grew into hatred and spite. ‘Good-for-nothings,’ she called your parents. She couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“I wish I’d known them,” Harry whispers. A whiplash of emotions has sunk him into the mindframe of his younger self, the one that spent every waking moment praying to whichever gods who could hear to give him his parents back.

“Your mother and father were the best people I’ve ever known. Your mother had a way with words that no one else could ever hope to match, and your father a charm and charisma that even the sourest of his opposition couldn’t help but be drawn to. Both of them were fearsome fighters, incredible pilots, and they never once gave up. Most importantly, perhaps, was that they loved you to the ends of the universe…”

A brief moment of sombre quiet descends over the cave. Harry turns back to Threepio and finishes reattaching his arm. He reaches for the temporarily-removed restraining module and begins to root around inside the panel for the correct docking ports, but a disconcerting emulation of a wince from Threepio sees him hesitate. Harry squints into his glowing photoreceptors before very pointedly placing the module back on the workbench and flicking the panel closed. When he turns back to Remus he finds a pair of oddly youthful, gleaming eyes trained on him.

“I’ve heard you’re quite the pilot yourself, Harry—” He gestures to Threepio, “—and you seem to have a talent for tinkering. Neither of those are hereditary, as I’m sure you know, but a number of smaller things that are may come together and improve upon your skills… Still, even a duckling must be taught to swim.”

Harry tilts his head to the side as he considers Remus’ words. “What’s a duckling?”

“Ah,” Remus says. “Never mind. All the same, you are much like your father. Maybe moreso like your mother. But you’ve grown quite a lot since the last time I saw you, and I think it is time.”

Remus gets carefully to his feet and wanders over to a small, old-fashioned cheston the other side of the cave. Kneeling at its edge he begins rifling through it, finally pulling out a long silver cylinder much like the one dangling from his own belt.

“Lily wanted you to have it only when you were old enough, but James thought it would be too amusing not to give it to you while you were still a child. I tried to do my best and compromise, but when I tried to give it to you your uncle was rather… Vocal, in his disapproval. He believed you’d start getting crazy ideas and bring harm to their own son before following Old John Lupin off on some idealistic crusade.”

He returns to Harry and holds out the cylinder. Harry takes it cautiously, feeling it’s solid weight in his hand and the subtle hum of…  _ Something. _ Something within its inner workings. Something Harry hasn’t ever felt before. Something natural, organic.

“Sir?” 

Harry starts. “Yes?”

“If you won’t be needing me, might I shut down for the time being?” Threepio enquires. “It will help the armature nerves to knit, and I’ve been long overdue an internal cleansing.”

“Sure,” Harry tells him distractedly. He holds up the cylinder to Remus. “What is this?”

The cylinder consists of mostly handgrip below a stubby rim unit with a stubborn-looking switch. The most perplexing part of his contraption is the power cell—the smallest Harry has ever seen. The rating of it indicates that whatever it is, it needs a lot of power, though Harry cannot see what could be so intensive.

_ “That _ is a lightsaber,” Remus tells him. “The chosen tool of the Jedi.”

Harry holds the saber horizontally in front of him, making sure that the space at either end is clear. With no little trepidation he flicks the switch on the grip and a bright, humming beam of blueish-white light forms at the top end. The beam is no wider than two of his fingers and dense to the point of opaque. It does not fade, but continues until about two and a half feet in length. He looks up at Remus in mute surprise.

“Lightsabers are not so clumsy as a blaster or fusioncutter,” Remus observes. “They require more skill than a sight and trigger to use, and to use one  _ well _ is the mark of someone with discipline and training out of the ordinary. It is an elegant weapon, and a symbol. For centuries the Jedi were the most powerful and respected establishment in the galaxy. We served as the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic.”

Harry continues to stare mutely at Remus. He feels his throat working to form words, his head spinning in an attempt to catch up and absorb all of this new input. Absently, his thumb climbs to the switch and disengages the lightsaber.

“How…” he manages after a moment or two. “How did my parents die?”

“They were betrayed and murdered,” Remus declares without preamble. “A young Jedi, a  _ friend,” _ he spits, “fell to the dark side of the Force. Darth Vader was borne of the unintentional neglect of the Jedi and murdered your parents in the name of the Empire. Vader used our training and a strong attachment to the Force to do evil for the Empire, and with the Jedi either dead or disbanded, there was not much that could be done. Today, we are all but extinct.”

Remus sighs and returns to his seat with an air of sorrow. “In many way the Jedi were too kind, too trusting for their own good. They put so much trust in the stability of the Republic that they were blinded to the withering morality of its most prominent figurehead. They failed to realise that while the body may be sound, the head fell to the temptations of evil and power…

“I wish I knew what Vader was after. Sometimes I feel that the Empire is merely biding its time in preparation for some unfathomable abomination sure to secure their reign, as such is the destiny of those who master the Force and are yet consumed by its darkest side.”

Harry swallows past the dryness in his throat. “That’s the second or third time you’ve mentioned a force, sir,” he says. “Which do you mean?”

“I do sometimes forget, in my babbling,” Remus says. “And please, just Remus is fine.” Harry nods, and he continues. “Let us say that the Force is what guides a Jedi, is what one must do dealing with and is what one draws their strength from. It is best explained as an energy field surrounding all living or organic beings. It surrounds each and every one us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.

“You must learn the ways of the Force, Harry, if you are to accompany me to Alderaan.”

“Alderaan!” Harry exclaims disbelievingly. “I can’t go to Alderaan! I don’t even know where it is. If I don’t get home soon Uncle Vernon is going to lose it completely.”

“I need your help, Harry. She needs your help. I’m getting too old for all of this.”

“Too old! I bet you’re barely forty,” Harry scoffs. He rises from the crate and begins to pace the cavern floor. “I can’t get involved, I have work waiting for me. I can’t do anything to beat the Empire from here. I’m not even allowed to go to the Academy.”

Remus raises one arch eyebrow. “That’s your uncle talking, that is.”

“As if!”

“Learn how to use the Force, Harry, and none of these things should ever need concern you again.”   
Harry stops in his tracks and drags both hands down his face. The cool metal of the lightsaber still in his grip rests hard against his cheek.

“Look, maybe I can take you to Anchorhead. You can get a transport from there to Mos Eisley, I’m sure. Take Artoo with you. He belongs to you anyway.”

“You must do what you think is right,” Remus insists, smiling gently. Harry snorts.

“Yeah, well I’m not feeling too great right now.” He shakes his head and knocks Threepio on the head. “Come on, we’re leaving.”

“Oh,” Threepio gasps as he wakes. “My apologies sir, I shall be right with you.”

Harry returns Lupin’s tools to their correct places and packs away the work station. “We can be there by mid-noon if we start out soon.”

“That will be acceptable,” Remus affirms. Harry tries not to grind his teeth together and instead clips his new lightsaber to his belt.

Today has been a long bloody day.

*** * ***

The holding cell encompasses a dimness cruel enough to send nothing but haunting hallucinations creeping through the gloom. With barely enough illumination to see the black metal walls and black metal ceiling, the cell has been optimally designed to pierce the hearts of captives with fear and helplessness. Testament to its success is the tense startle its sole occupant gives at the barest hum of the cell door. 

On opening, it is clear that the door is thicker than her body is wide, as if, she snarls silently and bitterly, they expect her to be able to fight her way out of anything slimmer empty-handed. Straightening in her seat on the ledge against the far wall, Hermione Granger eyes the figures on the other side of the door with disdain and superiority. Several Imperial guards assume their positions either side of the hallway and are yet eclipsed by the monstrous sight of a tall, slim black shadow on its approach. When the shadow turns and steps into the room the Senator feels her heart stutter in her chest. Still, she does not let even the slightest semblance of fear show upon her face.

The shadow wears tight robes of the darkest black and a billowing cloak of void space upon its shoulders. It walks on muted black boots with the most sensible of heels and maintains the visage of a slim black mask that covers everything the cloak hood does not. It stops a few paces over the threshold and observes her impassively. A faint hiss of breath can be heard issuing from behind the mask.

Closely following this cloaked villain is a straight-backed, broad-shouldered smugness of a man, his long white-blonde hair gathered neatly at the base of his neck. He appears neither more nor less menacing when standing next to the Dark Lord.

Darth Vader lifts one hand and makes a slight ‘come forth’ gesture. A humming grows closer from outside in the corridor. In the next moment a hovering, shiny black sphere floats its way through the doorway and Hermione lifts her chin in defiance; she has heard rumours of such machines, of course—ones whose multitude of arms are tipped with the most horrifying arrays of torturous devices—and yet had been kind-hearted enough to believe Imperial technicians incapable of engineering such a monstrosity. She knows that programmed irreversibly into its memory will be innumerous unspeakable barbarities, every known outrage of a method, and for a comprehensive range of species and subspecies at that.

Vader and Malfoy observe her in silence, allowing her time to process the nightmare come to life hovering on its repulsors before her. After what she supposes he deems a sufficient stretch of time has passed Malfoy motions to the droid. It moves towards her as he speaks in his sibilant drawl, gradually blocking out every tangible sight in the cell.

“Now, Senator Organa…  _ Princess _ Organa… We shall discuss the location of the principle rebel base.”

*** * ***

“What’s that over there?” Harry asks, throwing a glance over Lupin’s side of the speeder at a distant plume of rising smoke.

“I’m not sure…” Remus says. “We should have a look, someone may need our help.”

Harry banks the speeder and directs it over several dunes until they come to what remains of a smouldering wreck in the depression between the last and the next. Numerous charred forms, organic and inorganic, lie scattered and abandoned around the edge of the disaster, and in the middle of it all is the mauled and blasted remains of a sandcrawler.

“You two stay here,” Harry instructs the droids. “In case we need to make a quick getaway…”

He hops over the side of the speeder, shortly joined by Remus as they inspect the carnage all around them. Several sets of wide, rounded depressions catch Harry’s eye and he runs over to them, kneeling by a shallow outline. 

“They were sandpeople,” he deducts. “Bantha tracks, leading right past the attack. Look—” Nearby in the sand he unearths a broken shard of a metal blade. “—gaderffii staves.”

“Do you not notice anything odd about these tracks, Harry?” Remus asks. Harry frowns and shoots him a questioning look. “Notice how there are several sets of tracks there—parallel. Sandpeople travel in single file, bantha after bantha to hide their numbers.”

“Then who?” Harry asks. 

“Well I quite think whoever they were they weren’t sandpeople, but they did want anyone who happens across this mess to think that they are.” Remus picks his way down the dune to the base of the sandcrawler. “Do you see these scorch marks? Where they’re centred, approximately?” Portals, support beams and treads; the attackers had taken out the jawas’ mobility and weaknesses. “Sandpeople aren’t so interested in efficiency, Harry. In fact, I would wager that only Imperial Stormtroopers would be so severe.”

“But what would the Empire want with jawas?” Harry grumbles. He nudges the nearest lifeless jawa onto its back and grimaces. “These are the same ones who sold us Threepio and Artoo, I recognise the design on this one’s cloak. But what would they want with them… They must have killed more sandpeople to get those banthas…” Harry sweeps his gaze over the scene. He lands on Threepio and Artoo who have, despite his warning, helped themselves down from the speeder and are examining a nearby jawa. An abrupt, cool swooping sensation drops into Harry’s stomach, filling it with dread. “The droids. They tracked the droids. And if they could track them to the crawler, they’ll know… and that would lead them—”

Harry takes a staggering step that almost brings him to his knees. Before Remus or Threepio can begin to protest he’s racing to the speeder and throwing himself into the pilot’s seat. He doesn’t hear anything but the rushing in the ears, the chanting of his silent swearing and the swirling guilt that sickens him that his terror is more for himself than his aunt and uncle.

The desert wind rips through his hair as he accelerates beyond the recommended limits. The weather has turned between the attack in the canyon and now, with clouds swelling and blanketing the sky. The wind is harsh and a rare chill in the increasingly oppressive oven-heat the cover induces. Still it’s not long before Harry can see smoke rising into the sky ahead of him.

He comes upon the homestead like one might find a burning furnace. From every vent and entrance spills thick, choking black smoke. Harry flings himself from the speeder and sprints across the sand, surveying the sight of his destroyed home with an ill-making churn of conflicting feelings. Right there, pouring out of the steps of the domed house entrance, are two blackened, familiar forms. Harry does well to swallow down the bile rising in his throat. His home, his only relatives (if one was generous enough to call them so) and his only source of livelihood laid out in skeletons before him. Sweltering heat still emanates from the building he turns away from in his trembling march back to the speeder. 

A fleeting thought is cast out to his grandparents buried beneath the sand here and quickly dismissed. They, like his parents, are long gone and unreachable. There is nothing here for him now.

Harry does not remember the journey back to the site of the destroyed sandcrawler. The next he knows he is sitting with an idling engine and a middle-aged ex-Jedi shaking his shoulder gently.

“Alderaan,” he says with blunt dispassion. “Tell me what I need to do.”

*** * ***

“Mos Eisley Spaceport,” Remus says. He and Harry stand at the top of a tall plateau gazing down at the dusty sprawl of squat, domed and square buildings below them. From their vantage point the town looks deceptively small; Harry knows that the vast majority of it is sure to be underground. Huge crater-looking holes scatter the rim to one side of the town, from and into which a steady stream of space-faring craft flow. “Never will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy on the planet. The Empire will have been alerted to us by now, Harry, so we must be careful.”

“I’m ready, Remus,” Harry replies seriously. He can practically feel the weak amusement his certainty gives the old man but doesn’t bother working himself up about it.

Unlike Anchorhead, the bustling nature of Mos Eisley lends reason to above-ground movement during the heat of the day. Designed with commerce and merchanting in mind, even the oldest of the town’s buildings are built to shield from the suns’ worst. Often beneath the old, cracked sandstone of most structures double walls of durasteel can be found, circulating coolant between them.

Harry slips the speeder through the busy outskirts of the town. Womp rats chirp and bounce from bin to bin between shuffling feet. Creatures and droids of all kinds mingle and scuffle, huge mounts rear their heads and tiny one-man speeders dart through the crowds. Harry slows his pace to keep up with the shifting tributaries of people. They’re only a few streets away from the main thoroughfare when he spots the shining, battered white armour of Imperial troopers up ahead, the orange pauldron of one an exercise in counterproductivity if it’s meant to stand out in comparison to the others’ black with all this sand. Harry feels his heart kick in his chest as he considers for one panicked moment speeding up and attempting to slip away through the crowd. Remus reaches out and places a hand on his wrist, steadying him, and the impulse passes. A large scaled quadruped with an elongated arching neck crosses their path and forces them to stop just before the trooper checkpoint. The five tromp their way with blasters in hand to circle the speeder. Harry takes a deep breath and makes sure his foot is hovering a fraction away from the accelerator.

The troopers circle the speeder. Their leader, the one in the pointless orange pauldron, tears his helmeted gaze from the droids on the back seat to assess Harry and Remus.

“How long have you had these droids?” the trooper asks. If his voice had held any inflection it’s flattened mercilessly by the filter in his dust-streaked mask.

“About… About three or four seasons,” Harry lies. His heartbeat flutters nauseatingly.

“They’re for sale, if you’re interested,” Remus adds. “For the right price, of course.”

The trooper does not bother to reply, for he is too busy directing his squadron into a thorough checking of the speeder’s underside and rear. “Did you come in from the south?”

“No,” Harry says. “No, we live in the west, near the town of Bestine.”

“Bestine…” the trooper echoes with what Harry assumes is suspicion. “Let’s see some identification.”

Harry swallows. Surely the trooper has sensed his fear and unease by now. If not, they only have a smattering of seconds before it all goes to hell anyway—if they get a look at his formal ID they’ll immediately know the location of his official home and closest relatives. The nauseous feeling has migrated from deep in his stomach to high in his chest, but it does nothing to temper his confusion when Remus leans serenely across him and says to the trooper, “You don’t need to see his identification.”

Harry blinks and gapes at the old fool.

“I don’t need to see your identification,” the trooper confirms. Harry whips his head back around to gape at him instead. 

“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for,” Remus continues.

“These aren’t the droids we’re looking for,” the trooper echoes.

“He can go about his business.”

“You can go about your business.”

“Move along,” Remus finally whispers.

“Move along,” the trooper says, waving them off. “Move along.”

As soon as the other troopers step back Harry puts his foot down. The speeder jumps a little in his haste but carries them away from the troopers quickly enough that he can’t bring himself to care. He lets himself exhale several shaky breaths before he slows down again and risks a glace in the rear mirrors. The trooper in orange appears to have embroiled himself in an argument with the rest of his squadron but they’re now too far away to hear. When Harry glances at Remus the Jedi only shakes his head and smiles, so Harry does his best to swallow his roiling curiosity and continue through the narrowing streets.

It seems Remus knows something of where they’re going. He points Harry down streets heading farther and farther into the older parts of Mos Eisley, where the seedier characters skulk in shadows and the old vices are more and more prevalent. With one final indication to what could be one of the original spaceport’s first blockhouses, Harry guides the speeder into a vacant spot outside and cuts the engine. The blockhouse, which he can safely assume exists mostly underground, has been converted to a cantina, the patronage of which can be somewhat inferred from the range of vehicles parked outside. Some of them Harry can recognise and others are completely alien, which does absolutely nothing to assuage the ever-present anxiety curling between his ribs.

No sooner than the speeder has come to a halt does a tiny jawa appear from thin air and begin running its hands over its sleek and dusty sides. Harry clicks his tongue and leans over the side to growl a guttural, subhuman warning, immensely satisfied when the jawa scarpers.

“I cannot see a silver lining to those jawas,” Threepio mutters. “Disgusting creatures…”

“I still don’t know how we got past those troopers,” Harry says accusingly. “I really thought they’d have us then and there.”

“The Force is your ally, Harry,” Remus says. “It exists in the mind. It can be used to influence others to your bidding, and it is there that you will begin to learn of its dangers.”

Harry watches him for a long moment. When nothing more clarifying is forthcoming he nods shortly and dismounts the speeder. “And we’re sure this is where we can find a pilot that can take us to Alderaan?”

“Quite,” Remus hums. “Most of the good and independent freighter pilots frequent this place, even when they can afford better. They can talk freely here, pick up well paying jobs. You will do well to remember that appearance does not relate anything to ability.” Harry thinks of the hulking Tusken and its glimmering gaderffii and tries not to scoff. “Watch yourself; this place can be rough.”

Harry finds himself squinting as they enter the cool, dank cloakroom of the cantina. The steps in front of them lead down to a dimly lit floor and bar, on which a dizzying array of creatures have gathered. In one corner is a performing quintet of pale, bulbous-headed creatures with large glittery black eyes. In another are a group of drinkers, some with scales, some with fur, some with more eyes than even seem necessary. A large insectoid slips between two outrageously tall women at the bar while something short and fuzzy makes grabby hands at the barman.

“Corellians,” Remus says. He indicates a table of raucous humans near the back of the cantina. “Pirates, most likely. There’s bound to be one or two we can talk to among them.”

Leaving Harry to wander his way through the crowd, Remus disappears off and turns up moments later to a welcoming reception amongst the supposed Corellians.

“Hey!” shouts the gruff barman. Harry tries not to jump when he looks over and realises  _ he’s _ the one being addressed. “We don’t serve their kind in here!”

“What?” Harry says, apparently struck dumb.

“Your droids,” the barman grunts. “They’ll have to wait outside.”

Harry bites his lip and turns to Threepio. “You’ll be better off waiting outside with the speeder—we don’t want any trouble here.”

“I am  _ quite _ in agreement, sir,” Threepio says. He gestures to Artoo and leads them back out onto the street, leaving Harry alone once again. In the spirit of the establishment he makes his way over to the bar and tugs on the barman’s sleeve for a drink. The man grunts again and serves him something pinkish that doesn’t smell too bad, so Harry shrugs and takes an apprehensive sip. It’s sour and sweet and surprisingly soft on the tongue.

With a glance in the direction of the Corellians Harry is shocked to see Remus no longer accompanied by the dozen men but a towering, shag-carpeted anthropoid wearing a well-stocked bandolier and a large maw of sharp teeth. He’s heard stories of Wookies before, but only ever stories; never in his life had he expected to meet one in person. He almost chokes on his next sip when Remus gestures to him over his shoulder and the Wookie’s beady yellow eyes fix him with an intense stare. 

A hard shove to Harry’s shoulder breaks him out of the encounter and instead brings him face to face with something that has two wet black eyes and is some sort of cross between a capybara and a baboon. It grunts and croaks in a language in no way resembling anything human, so, unable to make out a single syllable, Harry ignores it and turns back to his drink. Not half a moment later does he feel a tapping of fingers at his shoulder, and when he looks up he’s met by one of the most gruesomely-deformed humans he’s ever had the displeasure of meeting.

“He doesn’t like you,” informs the balding man whose piglike nose seems to have been crushed up between his eyes and innumerous twisting scars.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Harry says with a small frown. He gives them another fleeting glance and again tries to go back to his drink. The same hand grabs his tunic and turns him to face them.

_ “I _ don’t like you either!” the man announces. When he gets no further response from Harry he barrels on. “‘Sorry?’ Are you insulting us? I think you’d better watch yourself. We’re wanted men,” he adds proudly. He lets go of Harry’s tunic and instead gestures unsteadily between them. “I have the death sentence in twelve systems!”

“I’ll be careful, then,” Harry mutters as he looks away. The man grabs him again and throws him against the bar.

“YOU’LL BE DEAD!”

“This little one’s not worth the effort,” comes the soothing, ever-amused voice of Remus from behind Harry. “Come, let me get you something.”

In response to that, the disfigured human tightens his hold on Harry’s front and throws him bodily across the room. Harry stumbles back and trips, careening into a table and landing hard on his arse on the stone floor. The crowd shuffles back in a rising tide of chittering and squawking and the band ceases its playing instantly. Harry can see the two creatures moving to draw weapons, but with a hiss and a blinding light Remus ignites his lightsaber and flashes it in a smooth, precise series of motions deflecting both blaster shots and slicing down towards the odd grunting creature. The lightsaber is darkened and stowed away before the creature even knows to let out a harrowing, screeching scream, but when he does it is clear to all who can see why: his severed gunslinging arm lies gory on the grated floor not a foot away from its crouched form.

Five of Harry’s racing heartbeats pass in utter silence (save the groaning of the maimed creature) before the chatter picks back up and the patrons of the bar turn back to their business. The band resumes its playing and all the attention finally slides from Harry’s back. Remus glances up at the Wookie and gives a small nod before striding over to Harry and helping him to his feet.

“I’m all right,” Harry mumbles. He adjusts his glasses and brushes down his clothes and avoids looking at the Wookie.

“Chewbacca here is first mate on a ship that might suit us,” Remus tells him in a low tone. They both look to the Wookie Chewbacca who whines and groans something that, accompanied by its gesturing, is unmistakably ‘Follow me.’ He ambles farther into the bar without waiting to see if Harry and Remus will follow, cutting an easy path towards a table in the very back corner.

The band shifts gears as Harry swipes someone else’s drink from a waiter’s tray on his way. Despite what one would think, his demeaning little fight has given him a confidence he hasn’t possessed since he set out to rescue Artoo that morning. With a Wookie and Remus, a finely skilled Jedi knight, at either side, he’s fairly certain no one in the cantina will be fool enough to grace him with so much as a dirty look. The table Chewbacca takes them to is empty, though he sits at one side of the booth and gestures for Harry and Remus to take the seats beside him. Harry sits and gulps at his drink, glancing over his shoulder at the bar before taking in the next tables. 

A tall, sheet-white human man with a shock of tousled ginger hair, an open-necked tunic and more than one blaster strapped to his thigh leans against the wall a few feet away. A greenish humanoid giggles and fawns over him standing between his legs. He leans in and whispers something in her ear and her mouth stretches in a wide, disconcerting smile before she slips away, her long fingers lingering on the pale planes of his chest visible beneath his neckline. Chewie roars gently and the man looks up, meeting Harry’s eye and smirking when Harry flusters at being caught and flicks his gaze away. His efforts are to no avail, it seems, when this frankly ridiculous red-headed man slides into the booth opposite him and Remus, grinning away and leaning low over the table on his elbows.

Really, it’s all Harry can do to keep himself from stupidly blurting out, ‘Bloody hell, your biceps are  _ huge.’ _

Now that they’re up close and personal, Harry is unwittingly subject to taking in the rest of this man’s buoyant personality. He has sharp features, an openness that speaks of utter confidence (or insane recklessness) and more freckles on the skin that’s visible than anyone could ever feasibly count. He could be five years older than Harry or a dozen, Harry can’t tell, but his grin sharpens and his coppery eyes sparkle darkly in the dim cantina light.

“George Solo,” the man says lightheartedly. His accent is one Harry supposes is from Corellia, though it isn’t too different from his own. “Captain of the  _ Millennium Falcon. _ Chewie here tells me you’re looking for passage to the Alderaan system.”

“Indeed,” Remus agrees. “If it’s a fast ship.”

“Fast ship?” George Solo repeats. He leans back and lets out a guffawing laugh. “A fast ship, he says. You’ve never heard of the  _ Millennium Falcon?” _

“No,” Remus replies easily. “Should I have?”

“Well, it’s only the ship that made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs!” Harry looks blankly from smug-looking Solo to slightly impressed, still-amused Remus. Solo leans forward on his outrageous arms again and lowers his voice for just the four of them. “I’ve outrun Imperial starships more times that I can count. And not the local bulk cruisers, mind—I’m talking about the big Corellian builds. I reckon she’s fast enough for you, old man. So what’s the cargo?”

Remus chuckles. “Only passengers. Myself, the boy, two droids… And no questions asked.”

Solo huffs a mischievious laugh that settles well on his face and sparkles in his eyes. “What is it, some kind of local trouble?”

“Let’s just say we’d like to avoid any  _ Imperial _ entanglements,” Remus replies.

“Well,” Solo says, “that’s the real trick these days, isn’t it? It’s gonna cost you somethin’ extra.” He reaches for Harry’s drink and takes a long swig of it without preamble. He sighs and sets the plastic cup down. “Ten thousand. All in advance.” He smiles. “And no questions asked.”

Harry balks. “Ten thousand!?” He looks to Remus and back to Solo and wonders if the both of them are mad. “We could almost buy our own ship for that!”

Solo’s grin turns lopsided as he leans back across the table towards him. “But then who’s gonna  _ fly _ it, kid? You?”

“You bet I could!” Harry snaps. “I’m not such a bad pilot myself, I could—”

Remus puts out a placating arm that pushes him back into his seat and stems the flow of his outrage. Truthfully, Harry hadn’t even noticed he’d started to stand.

“We don’t have that much on us now,” Remus admits, “but we can pay you two thousand upfront and a further fifteen when we get to Alderaan.”

George Solo turns a considering but skeptical eyebrow on him. Harry breathes a small sigh of relief at the relenting of being the sole recipient of that heated gaze.

“Fifteen thousand… You can get that sort of money there?”

“From the government itself, once we land. At worst, you’ll have earnt an honest two thousand for your work.”

But Solo does not seem to hear Remus’ last jab. “Seventeen thousand…” he murmurs. “All right, you’ve got yourselves a ship. We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready, docking bay ninety-four. Though you’d best be making yourselves scarce if you don’t want any of those Imperial entanglements—the  _ Falcon _ won’t do you any good here.” He nods to the entrance of the cantina, through which several Imperial troopers have just marched. Orange pauldron from earlier makes an enquiry with the barman who points to the farthest back booth.

“All right, we’ll check it out,” Orange says. He turns to investigate, and though none other than himself would ever be able to tell you, his eyes are wide and disbelieving behind the helmet; the table he would swear had been occupied just a split-second before is emptier than a shift-deck during lunch hour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I tell you I was tempted to make it docking bay ninety-three...  
> * any offensive descriptions of characters are purely for emphasis of character (and the fact that Harry is an insulated Outer Rim country boy), and not my own opinion


	3. III

“If this ship is as fast as he’s boasting, then we ought to do well,” Remus muses as they make their hurried way through the dingy backstreets of Old Mos Eisley. Harry grimaces and pulls his poncho over his head—not only does a pervading damp wretch the twisting burrows down here, but the buildings are tall and cramped enough that the suns do not penetrate to the ground. “Here should do.”

Remus guides them to their left, where the large metal door of an empty storage container sits half open. Harry peers in to check it’s unoccupied before he turns to the two droids at their heels.

“You two need to stay here,” he says. “Lock the door and don’t come out until we call you. The Empire’s right on your tail, it wouldn’t do to have you grabbed now.”

“Affirmative, sir,” Threepio says. Artoo chirps and whistles. Threepio knocks him on his domed head but does not translate. They shuffle into the storage container, and once Artoo plugs himself into the control panel inside the great door groans shut.

“You shall have to sell your speeder,” Remus tells Harry regretfully.

“It’s all right,” Harry sighs. “I don’t think I’ll be needing it.”

Remus leads them back towards the cantina where they’ve left it parked. Harry hops into the pilot’s seat and gives her one last loving inspection before he ignites the engine and sets off after Lupin’s direction. He takes them through the wider streets of the old town, past the crouched, hooded shades of unsavoury figures doing dealings in doorways and shadowy recesses. It’s not too long before they’re pulling up outside a dusty parking lot nestled in the courtyard of three tall domed buildings. The proprietor hurries to their side and begins his squirrely sales pitch, but Remus holds up a hand to quell his excitement.

The speeder is a hard sell. Harry knows that it’s an old model, well-used and out of trend, but it’s reliable, fast and in incredible condition. The dealer tries to outright refuse them at first, but Harry would be hard pushed to miss the covetous glances he sends the speeder at such frequent intervals. When eventually it seems that they’ve run out of threats and pleas and reasoning to exchange, the dealer leads them to what counts as his office and counts out his credits as if it’s a physical injury. He hands them over gingerly, hesitatingly, and then snatches the ignition key out of Harry’s hand as soon as he lets them drop.

“This is the absolute best he can do,” Harry says. His mouth twists wryly in his anxiety. “Since the XP-38 came out, this model just isn’t up to scratch anymore.”

“Don’t worry yourself, Harry,” Remus gentles him. “You’ve done a great job. I have enough to cover what’s left, pay no mind.”

Returning to collect their droids takes a lot longer than dropping them off. The walk is long and fraught with less-than pleasantries, but eventually they make it back to the storage container without having been too roughed up.

“Docking bay ninety-four…” Harry murmurs. “Ninety-four… Ah ha.”

In front of them the next wide stone arch has the number ninety-four painted in thick, fading black over its lintel. Leaning out of the ramp they can see the towering form of Chewbacca waving enthusiastically to them and beckoning them in.

“He seems excited,” Threepio muses. “Though I couldn’t tell you what for…”

The carved-out crater of the docking bay is pitted with crumbling rock shelves and boulder falls. In the centre sits a small, battered ellipsoidal craft that looks to have been cobbled together out of a hundred or more scavenged and unusable parts. Though its hull is smooth and somewhat uniform, the additions of modules and components spring up all over it in a fashion known to none, presumably, but its pilots. It’s quite a wonder that the thing can even hold itself together, let alone achieve supralight travel.

“What a pile of junk,” Harry murmurs to himself. “Did he really say this thing can make it to hyperspace?”

Remus’ mouth twitches in a tiny smile but he does not respond, instead gesturing to the slim figure walking towards them from the ship’s landing ramp. Either George Solo has supernaturally good hearing or he’s used to the reactions the  _ Millennium Falcon _ provokes.

“She may not look like much, but she’ll make it point-five past lightspeed,” he says. The smug tilt to his grin does not ease Harry’s doubts. “In addition to piloting, I quite like to tinker; I’ve added a few of my own modifications here and there over the years. She’s good to go.”

Harry feels his face contort into a skeptical wince as he tries to reassess the ship with the new knowledge of its owner’s claims. Either George is the biggest liar this side of the Outer Rim or there’s a little more to the  _ Falcon _ than meets the eye, but with a reverant thought to Remus’ previously imparted wisdom, Harry decides to reserve his judgement until he’s seen the thing in action.

“Anyway,” he continues, “we are a little rushed, so if you’ll please board this way…”

George rests a hand on Harry’s shoulder as he directs him, Remus and the two droids to step onto the landing ramp. The heat of his palm sinks right through Harry’s poncho and tunic despite the desert climate. Chewbacca follows them up onto the ship and strides past to the cockpit. Harry watches curiously as he shuffles himself into the tight fit of a pilot’s seat with ease and begins the pre-take-off preparations. 

The main passageway of the ship opens into some sort of living-working quarters, at the side of which is a circular booth around a table with a large number of buttons around its rim. Remus and Harry seat themselves at the booth and begin to strap themselves in, Threepio sitting gingerly at their side and clamping his fingers, stronger than any acceleration belt, to the edge of the unit. A sudden shout echoes up from the ramp and the harsh spitting sound of blaster fire. 

“Chewie! Deflector shields, quick!” George yelps. “Get us out of here!”

A thudding of heavy footsteps on metal betrays the moment George comes flying into the ship’s hallway. He turns and slams his hand down on the hatch release, dropping the thick airlock door over the closing ramp. Harry watches with interest when he comes flying past the living area and into the cockpit.

“Oh my,” Threepio quavers as the ship rumbles, whines and judders as it begins to lift off from the crater of the docking bay. “I’d forgotten how much I hate space travel.”

As soon as the rattling and shuddering of moving through atmo subsides, Harry unclasps his acceleration belt and makes his way towards the cockpit.

“…Try to hold them off while I make the calculation for the jump to lightspeed,” George is saying. Harry rounds the corner in time to see him move away from a console by the door and climb his gangly limbs into the pilot’s seat next to Chewie in the co-pilot’s. “Stay sharp, there’re two more coming in. They’re trying to cut us off.” He glances over his shoulder to Harry. “Five ships… What the blazes did you two do to attract  _ this _ kind of company?”

“I don’t suppose you can outrun them, can you?” Harry says sarcastically. He feels Remus come to stand at his shoulder. “I thought you said this thing was fast.”

George snorts and flicks a couple of switches. “Watch your mouth, kiddo, or you’ll find yourself floating home. There’s five of them, in case you didn’t catch that the first time I said it. We’ll be safe once we make the jump to hyperspace…” He grins again at the console. “Can’t be tracked accurately at supralight. Anyway, I know a few tricks to keep the hard-arses off our backs. I wish I’d known you lads were so popular.”

“Why’s that?” Harry asks distractedly. He gazes out at the black expanse of nothingness in front of them. “Would you’ve changed your mind?”

“Hah, not a chance,” George scoffs. “Like any good businessman, I’d’ve just raised the price.”

Harry’s retort is lost in a flinch as he, George, Chewbacca and Remus each lift a shading arm to ward their eyes against the bright flashes of green that streak past the viewport and explode.

“And here’s the fun part…” 

“How long until we can make the jump to lightspeed?” Remus asks.

“A few minutes at most,” George replies, not bothering to look up from his work at the console. “We’re still within the planet’s gravitational field range, so the computer needs to compensate to make an effective jump if we want to leave before we get to the infinity point. I  _ could _ override it, but then the hyperdrive would probably shred itself, and then I’d have a nice hold full of scrap metal as well as you two jokers.”

“Are you joking?” Harry splutters. He points to the display showing the five soaring cruisers. “They’re gaining on us!”

“Flying through hyperspace is a far cry from dusting crops, all right?” George snaps, turning a glare as fiery as his hair on Harry. “Ever tried calculating a jump yourself?”

Harry shakes his head and shies back a little. The cockpit jostles from the ongoing explosions outside the viewport.

“Well it’d be nice if we rushed it and ended up going right through a star or a ruddy great black hole or something, wouldn’t it? That would end your journey really nicely.” He tuts and turns back to his console, on which an insistent red light has started blinking.

“What’s that?” Harry asks quietly.

“We’re losing a deflector shield,” George tells him. His face and voice are set in a grim line. “Go strap yourselves in, we’re about ready to make the jump.”

Harry needs no further prompting. He turns tail and picks his careful, quick way back to the booth where Threepio is waiting for them and throws himself into a seat. The accelerator belts jingle and tremble when he tries to separate one from the next but he eventually manages to untangle one to strap over his chest. Remus takes his seat beside Harry and fastens his own belt. Back in the cockpit, Chewie groans something unintelligible. A low whine begins in the depths of the ship. Harry feels something immensely powerful take hold of the hull, and suddenly they’re flung forward with a force that threatens to crush his ribs.

*** * ***

Hermione walks down a long black corridor lit only by its stark strip lighting and gleaming reflective surfaces. She is flanked on either side by Imperial guards, followed from behind by the Lord Vader, and has both hands cuffed in front of her. Ahead is a wide open chamber with a huge, spanning, rectangular viewport looking out over a blue-green gem of a planet—the crown jewel of its system, Alderaan.

In front of the viewport stands Governor Malfoy, his hands clasped at the small of his back and his shoulders squared primly as he looks out upon the sight of her home planet. The guards at her sides stop a few paces from his back and force her to a standstill. The Governor turns on his heel and appraises her with the twitch of an eyebrow. His rows of rank insignia glint in the low light.

“Governor Malfoy,” Hermione says briskly and with as much vitriol as she can muster. “I should have expected to find  _ you _ holding Vader’s leash. I must tell you that I recognised your foul stench the moment I was brought on board.”

The corner of Malfoy’s lips twitches upwards. 

“Charming,” he simpers, “to the last.” He reaches one pale hand to run the backs of his knuckles down her cheek. She tries to turn away but finds Vader close at her back and penning her in. “You don’t even know how hard I found signing the order for your termination.”

Hermione scoffs. “I’m shocked you had the courage to take up the responsibility yourself.”

“Of course, had you cooperated in our investigation and responded well to our more traditional forms of inquiry—”

_ “Torture, _ I think you’ll find it’s called,” she snaps tremulously. She can still feel the tear tracks sticky and tight on her cheeks.

“Let us not squabble over the nature of semantics,” Malfoy says. “Princess Hermione, before your execution, I would be honoured for you to be my guest at a little… ceremony. It will be one that certifies the operational status of this battle station while at the same time ushering in a new era of Imperial technical supremacy. No star system will dare oppose the Empire now…  _ Not _ when they know what we are capable of.”

“Force will not hold your Empire together, Malfoy,” Hermione retorts. “Force has never held anything together for very long, I’m sure you’re all very aware of that. The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. You are a foolish man, Malfoy, and foolish men often find themselves choking to their deaths on their own delusions.”

“Is that what you truly think, Princess? Well… I cannot help you there. However I can tell you that, in a way, you have determined the choice of subject for this demonstration. You see, since you have been so reluctant to provide us with the location of your rebel base, I have deemed it appropriate to select an alternative…” He turns to the viewport. “Your home planet of Alderaan.”

“You can’t!” Hermione declares at once, enraged. “You  _ cannot _ attack Alderaan! We are a peaceful planet, we have  _ no _ standing armies,  _ nor _ do we have any outer-atmospheric faring weaponry.”

“You would rather provide another target—a military target?” Malfoy snarls. “Then  _ name—the—system.” _ He steps forward again, into her space. She glares furiously up at him, grinding the teeth in the back of her skull. “I have grown tired of your games, Princess. For the last time… Where is the rebel base?”

Hermione stares out over his shoulder at her homeworld. It hangs in the void like a drop of pearlescent precipitation on a palm leaf.

“Dantooine,” she confesses quietly, though the steel has not disappeared from her voice. “They’re on Dantooine.”

Malfoy huffs a gentle laugh of satisfaction. “There. You see, Lord Vader? She can be reasonable…” He turns to the admiral waiting at parade rest beside him. “Continue with the operation. You may fire when ready.”

_ “WHAT?” _

“Oh, you’re far too trusting,” Malfoy says. He turns to her with a small, smug smile. “Dantooine is too remote to make an effective demonstration… But don’t worry. We shall deal with your  _ rebel _ friends soon enough.”

Vader’s strong hands clamp down on each of Hermione’s upper arms, preventing her attempts to launch herself into a bare-fisted attack on the Governor. “You can’t do this!” she shouts. “How dare you—how  _ dare _ you! You foul, loathsome,  _ evil _ little—!”

Beneath them, a low hum builds within the station. The hum turns to a whine that coils and coils until a dazzling, searing green light can be seen through the viewport. For a moment the entire window is filled with this flash of green, and then the occupants of the observation deck are blinking dancing spots from their eyes as they are plunged into darkness. 

A great pain and suffering descends on Hermione like a punch to the solar plexus; billions upon billions of terrors and cries and pleas are silenced as one in less than a second.

*** * ***

Harry holds the lit lightsaber aloft. He watches the hovering remote bot carefully before lunging forward and pretending to strike. The remote dodges back and sends a low-powered blast his way. He steps back into place and deflects it.

“Your cuts should flow, Harry,” Remus instructs. “Try to keep them from being so choppy… That’s it… Remember, the Force is omnipresent—it encompasses you as it radiates from you. A Jedi warrior can feel the Force as a physical presence.”

“So it’s an energy field,” Harry guesses.

“And something more,” Remus chuckles in that irritatingly cryptic way of his. “It is an aura, one that both controls and obeys all at once. No one, not even Jedi scientists, has ever been able to fully define the Force. It is likely that no one ever will.”

Harry rolls his neck and returns his full attention to battling the remote. One minute, maybe two later, Remus staggers across the hold floor despite there being no jolting attack to cause his unbalance. He flails his arm out to grab hold of the seat of a nearby chair and haul himself onto it, staring slack-jawed into the middle distance and seeming abruptly very, very far away.

“Remus?” Harry asks. The moment he sheathes his saber the remote drops to the floor. He ignores it and hurries to Remus’ side. “Remus, are you all right?”

“Wh-What?” Remus mumbles. He swallows and gasps and finally looks up at Harry, though his eyes aren’t properly focused. “Harry?”

Harry takes hold of his shoulder and gives him a small shake. “Are you all right? What happened?”

“The Force…” Remus says breathlessly. “I’ve felt… A great disturbance… As if millions—no,  _ billions _ of voices suddenly cried out in terror… and were suddenly… silenced…” 

Harry crouches beside his hoarse mentor in bewilderment and mild fear. “Is… Is there anything I can do?”

“Oh no, no,” Remus says. He takes a sharp inhalation and comes somewhat back to himself. “No, Harry, but I fear that something truly  _ terrible _ has happened…” He screws his eyes closed and rubs a harsh thumb over his temple. “No, Harry. You’d best continue your exercises.”

Harry nods uncertainly and gets back to his feet. He clicks his lightsaber on and returns to the centre of the floor. The remote, a metal sphere no bigger than his fist, has rolled towards a corner. He picks it up and flips a switch twice before tossing it back into the air so he can continue his practising.

“Well, you can forget your troubles with those Imperial slugs!” George Solo announces jovially, striding in from the cockpit. His heeled boots click across the metal floor as he heads for the seat in front of the console beside Remus. “I told you I’d outrun them.”

Harry continues to bat the remote’s discharges this way and that, pacing around it like a predator toying with food. Remus still sits breathing steadily with his face in his hand.

“All right, don’t all thank me at once,” George sighs. “Anyway, we should be at Alderaan at about oh-two-hundred hours local time.”

In the corner at the circular booth, the table with the switches has been activated. Several holographic projectors around the rim are casting light upon the surface in the fanciful and varied shapes of some very odd-looking species of alien. Chewbacca and Threepio sit in the booth with Artoo rolled up at the open side. One of the astromech’s concealed arms is outstretched and poised above the table’s buttons as he looks down upon the scene. He prods one of the buttons, sending a blue, many-legged thing scuttling across the board. He looks up at Chewbacca and beeps his assent. Chewbacca looks down at the controls and sends forth a screeching yellow ape-like thing.

“Now be careful, Artoo,” Threepio warns. Artoo chirps and pushes another button. A wrinkled grey monster with a long neck strides out and lifts the yellow ape above its head, bringing it down on the table and rendering it lifeless. The creatures scream and Artoo beeps his victory. Chewie whines a low, grumbling complaint.

“He made a fair play!” Threepio protests. “Screaming about it can’t help you.”

“You know, upsetting a Wookie isn’t really considered common wisdom, tin can,” George tells him conversationally.

“But sir, nobody worries about upsetting a droid!”

George snorts a laugh. “That’s because a  _ droid _ isn’t going to pull your  _ arms _ out of their sockets when they lose.”

Threepio looks from George to Chewbacca and back to George. “I see your point, sir.” He leans forward to Artoo and adds in an undertone, “Might I suggest a new strategy, Artoo—let the Wookie win.”

Harry continues to stalk the remote just as the remote stalks him. He deflects one bolt and dodges a second.

“Remember,” Remus says weakly, “a Jedi can feel the Force flowing through them.”

Harry frowns and makes an attempt to feel for such a thing. With his attention split, the remote darts forward and discharges a shot right into the meat of his underthigh. 

“Gah!” he yelps, hopping up and down on the leg that isn’t tingling something awful. George laughs behind his hand at the console and Harry feels heat rushing to the back of his neck.

“What?” he demands in a grumble.

“Hokey religions and archaic weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, Potter,” George says. Harry stops hopping, disengages his saber and gives him a searching look.

“You don’t believe in this Force, do you?”

“I’ve been from one end of this galaxy to the other,” George tells him with a wry twist to his mouth. “I’ve seen a lot of strange things, in that time, but I don’t think I could tell you in any confidence that I’ve ever seen good evidence of one all-powerful ‘Force.’” He laughs shortly. “There’s no mystical anything controlling  _ my _ destiny, that’s for sure.”

Beside him, Remus chuckles deeply. “I suggest you try again, Harry.” He lifts himself from the chair, steady now, and takes a scuffed and battered fighter pilot’s helmet from a peg on the wall. “Let go of your conscious self, and act on  _ instinct.” _

He places the helmet over Harry’s head, and instantly the world goes dark. 

“Wha—?” Harry brings a hand to his face and is met with a cool thermoplas plate. “I can’t see with the blast shield down!”

“Your eyes can deceive you, especially when you are most dependent on them. Don’t trust them.”

Harry gapes a moment longer at where he can hear Remus’ voice issuing from. He shakes himself and rolls his shoulders back, taking his lightsaber in hand and igniting it. The remote buzzes to life somewhere nearby. Harry lets go of a slow, grounding breath and attempts to reach out with his awareness to his surroundings. A buzz and a spit and a discharge bolt hits him dead in the shoulder, fizzling against his skin and bringing with it that horrid numbness. 

“Stretch out with your feelings,” Remus prompts. Harry grits his teeth and forces himself to calm down and do… whatever that entails. A moment of stillness later he hits a flash of understanding and knows exactly where the remote is—be it by sound or air pressure or some weird sense of spatial awareness—and he deflects two separate shots. As soon as he does the remote disappears back into the void of the unknown, but Harry feels the next bolt flying towards him before he’s even heard it fired.

“See, you can do it!”

“And I call that luck,” George scoffs. Harry pulls the helmet off in time to see him lean back pompously in his chair.

“In my experience there’s no such thing as  _ luck,” _ Remus replies scathingly.

George clicks his tongue and rolls his eyes. “Look, good against a remote is all right, yeah, but good against the living? That’s something else entirely.”

A new blinking light on the console by his arm is accompanied by a small non-urgent whistling alarm.

“Looks like we’re coming up on Alderaan,” George says. He catapults himself from the chair and heads to the cockpit, a confident swagger definitely swaying his hips more than they would otherwise. Remus watches him go and then turns to Harry with a knowing grin, as if they share knowledge George is not yet privy to.

“You know, I think I did feel something,” Harry admits quietly. Chewbacca gets up from the dejarik table to follow his captain. “At least, I might have…”

“That’s good, Harry,” Remus says. He pats him on the shoulder proudly. “Very good. You’ve taken your first step into a larger world—one beyond the imaginations of people like him.”

“He’s not  _ that _ bad…” Harry says. Well, he is a bit. But at least he’s a good enough pilot to get them to Alderaan.

As if sensing his thoughts, the ship begins to shudder violently beneath their feet. Artoo shrills in alarm and reaches out with one of his many instruments to grab hold of the table leg. Harry drops the pilot’s helmet into a seat and stumbles his way towards the cockpit, where the Doppler-distorted streaks of white starlight in the viewport have returned to their usual, pinprick points, and hundreds of gigantic chunks of rock appear to be flying straight at them.

“What’s going on?” he demands of the pilots. 

“We-We’re back in normal space, but we’ve come out into the middle of the worst asteroid field I’ve ever seen,” George says, frowning at the console in concentration. He flips up some switches and flips others down, twists a dial to his left and punches a large button just in front of him. “It’s not on any of the charts… According to the galactic atlas we’re in the right place all right, but one thing’s missing—Alderaan.”

“Missing?” Harry repeats. “What? But—But that’s insane!”

“I won’t argue with you there, but look for yourself.” He graces a hand over a display with a long series of numbers. “I’ve triple checked the coordinates, there’s nothing wrong with the navi-computer; we ought to be exactly one planetary diameter from the surface. It should be taking up our whole viewscreen, but just—nothing. It’s not there. Nothing but debris.”

The cockpit falls into silence as all three digest this information. The  _ Millennium Falcon _ sails between the gargantuan fragmenting rocks, shuddering and straining whenever one collides with the outer deflector shields.

George clears his throat. “Judging by the levels of wild energy out there and the volume of solid waste, my best guess is that Alderaan’s been… ripped to pieces.”

“Destroyed,” Harry breathes.  _ “How?” _

“The Empire,” answers a firm voice filled with sorrow. Remus leans in the doorway behind Harry with his gaze fixed in the far-away nothingness beyond the viewport as well as the overbearingly heavy weight of such an insinuation.

“No,” George says quietly. “No, they can’t—the entire starfleet couldn’t destroy the whole planet, they’d need a thousand ships with more firepower than I’ve—”

A shrill beeping stops them all in their tracks. George leans down over the console display and immediately sets into a flurry of motion. 

“Another ship. Can’t see what kind.”

“Survivors?” Harry suggests weakly. “Maybe they know what—”

“It’s an Imperial fighter,” Remus says, succinctly quashing any remaining hope.

“It followed us?” Harry asks skeptically.

“Not from Tatooine, it didn’t,” George says. “Not in hyperspace.”

“A short range fighter,” Remus agrees. Several explosions rock the  _ Falcon _ and two jets of green light precede the flying pass of the Imperial fighter.

George throws a burning glare over his shoulder. “If there aren’t any bases around here then where’d it come from?”

“They’re leaving quickly.” Harry frowns at the scanner. “If they identify us we’ll be in for it.”   
“Not if I can help it,” George growls. “Chewie, jam transmissions. Lay pursuit course.”

“It would be best to just let it go, I think,” Remus muses. “It’s too far out of range to do anything about it now.”

George huffs. “Not for long.”

The next few minutes are filled with a tense lack of conversation and the click-groaning of controls as George and Chewie keep the surprisingly maneuverable craft on the fighter’s tail. The fighter enacts a tricky assault course of evasive maneuvers but does not manage to shake them, instead appearing to give in after its fourth or fifth try and instead opening full throttle towards a distant point of light. It looks like a star, but Harry can’t help but frown as it steadily grows in size before them faster than should be possible.

“It’s impossible for a fighter that small to be all the way out here on its own,” George mutters.

“It must have gotten lost,” Harry suggests. “Been part of a—a bigger group or something.”

“Well, he won’t be around long enough to tell anyone about us! We’ll be on top of him in a minute or two.”

The star continues to grow ahead of them. A circular outline splits the blackness of the surrounding space in two, and Harry has a more logical realisation.

“It’s heading for that small moon,” he says, peering more closely.

“They must have an outpost there,” George acknowledges. “Though, according to the atlas Alderaan has never had any moons… Gah, I never have been any good at galactic topology. I’m only interested in the planets and moons with prospective customers… That’s it, my empirical friend, almost in range…”

“I’m not sure that’s what…” Harry begins. With a small glance at Remus’ amusement, he doesn’t bother finishing the thought.

As they draw closer still the landforms of the moon begin to emerge from its gloom. Craters, ridges, and bright reflective spots fleck the surface, yet on a closer inspection there appears to be nothing natural about them at all: the craters are far too regular in size and spacing, the mountains far too steeply cuboidal, and the canyons and valleys far,  _ far _ too straight and regular. On the upper hemisphere of the body is an immense depression that Harry would go as far as to hazard resembles something of a satellite dish.

“That’s no moon,” Remus murmurs in horrified reverence. “That’s a space station.”

“No!” George objects instantly. “No, it can’t be! It can’t possibly—I mean, look! Look at the size of it!”

Harry clutches the back of Chewie’s chair and swallows thickly. “I have a very bad feeling about this.”

“Turn the ship around,” Remus says calmly. Chewie rumbles gently.

“Yeah,” George clears his throat, clunking a lever and reaching for the controls, “I think you’re right. Full reverse, Chewie. Lock in the auxiliary power.”

Chewie groans and reaches for more switches above their heads. The  _ Falcon _ begins to shudder and bounce again as their speed is wrenched one way from another and the small Imperial fighter leaps toward the nearing space station. Gauges begin to buzz and whine in protest amidst Chewie’s accompanying commentary of growls and whinges, but the station continues to grow outside the viewport.

“Chewie, lock in the auxiliary power!”

Chewie roars and grumbles with more agitation. Rows upon rows of tremendous modular installations rise above the sleek and uniform station surface. Dish antennae bigger than Mos Eisley stare at them in taunting stoicism.

“Why are we still moving towards it?” Harry demands.

“We’re too late,” Remus murmurs. A single glance back at George confirms his suspicions. 

“They’ve got us in a tractor beam,” he admits through gritted teeth. “Strongest one I’ve ever seen. We’re being pulled in.”

“There has to be something we can do!”

“There’s nothing left! I’m on full power as it is! It’s not shifting even a fraction of a degree. I’m going to have to shut down before we melt our engines, but they’re not taking me without a fight, I’ll promise that.”

“You won’t win against them,” Remus observes in a detached way that has George’s hackles visibly rising. He presses a strong hand into the pilot’s shoulder before he can raise himself from his seat. “But there are  _ always _ alternatives to fighting.”

The true scale of the space station becomes apparent when a single hemisphere fully eclipses the viewscreen when they’re still several thousand kilometres away. Ringing the severe gash of an equator is an artificial range of reaching metal mountains—docking ports that stretch and beckon as far as two kilometres above the station’s surface. It’s minutes before the  _ Falcon _ comes within sight of the bay it’s apparently been assigned, a great gaping maw of stark white light enclosed with a blueish film of electrostatic force shielding. By this time, no one remains in the cockpit to see such an awful death sentence approach.

*** * ***

Harry keeps his breathing as slow and quiet as possible. He keeps his knees tucked so far into his chest that his breath begins to fog his glasses. He can feel his tunic opening to an uncomfortable breeze at his neckline, but he cannot move his arms in this cramped space to correct it without colliding his elbows with the walls, and that’s sure to make a noise. Aside each of his thighs is one of George’s feet, his legs less able to fit comfortably in the tight squeeze due to his (unnecessary, Harry grumbles) height. At his back is Artoo, currently refraining from movement or chatter lest he give them away. George’s calves brush Harry’s shins but are very little comfort when there’s a live blaster poised in his hands and pointed up at the false-panel ceiling. The false-panel ceiling over which Imperial stormtroopers are currently marching.

The hidey hole is quite warm for a metal box in the deep freeze of space. Maybe that’s due to their breaths, or the rushing of blood and pumping of hearts in their adrenaline fuelled stillness.  _ Tromp, tromp, tromp, _ continues overhead, but a clipped, commanding voice floats up from the bottom of the landing ramp. 

“…one aboard… according to the log… abandoned ship… a decoy, sir… jettisoned.”

Harry watches George. If he wasn’t so on edge he’d roll his eyes at the satisfied grin that steals across the man’s face.

A new voice, flat and modulated by a cover that allows it neither depth nor personality “…I want every part of this ship checked.”

“Get me a scanning crew in here on the double!” the first voice barks, louder now. “I want every part of this ship checked!”

_ Tromp, tromp, tromp _ overhead. George flicks a glance down at Harry, his lip caught between his teeth.

“There’s nobody here,” reports the modulated voice of a trooper.  _ Tromp, tromp, tromp _ and the last of them disappear down the landing ramp. They’re alone again.

George very cautiously clicks the safety back onto his blaster and tucks it away. With a hand on either wall he raises himself up to an awkward half-squat, the both of them holding their breaths as they listen. Nothing. A slit of light appears at the top of the cache when George lifts it a smidgen to peer out. After still no response he pushes it completely free of the deck and sets it gently aside. Light and fresh air flood inside, berating Harry’s eyes. He struggles to his feet to stand next to George and peer over the rim.

“It’s bloody lucky you had these compartments,” he murmurs.

“You didn’t think I kept the illegal goods in the hold, did you?” George murmurs back. Seemingly without thinking he takes Harry around the waist and lifts him onto the compartment edge. Harry jerks and almost slips back in—not that it would be a problem, seeing as he is perfectly capable of pulling himself out, thanks. “Although I never thought I’d be smuggling myself in them… Help me with Artoo.”

As George bends to heave Artoo up towards Harry, a second floor panel pops up just beside them. Remus appears over the edge, closely followed by Threepio. A third panel dislodges to reveal the terribly folded form of Chewie.

“This is ridiculous,” George mutters with vengeance. “Even if I  _ could _ take off, we’d never actually get anywhere with that tractor beam.”

Remus chuckles and hoists himself out of his compartment. “You can leave that to me.”

“You damn fool, I knew you were going to say that!”

“And yet who is the more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him?”

With both droids free of their metal prison pits, it’s only the sound of clomping boots echoing up the ramp that keeps George from launching into a tirade against Remus. All of them freeze.

“Ship’s all yours,” says a trooper. “If the scanners pick anything up, report it immediately.”

“Yes, sir,” replies a second voice.

George beckons to Harry to follow him. They creep towards the open hatch and press themselves to the wall of a corridor just before it. George unclips both of his blasters and hands one to Harry, who stares at him wide-eyed.

‘Hit them over the head with it,’ he mouths, and Harry practically sighs with relief.

The heavy footsteps begin up the ramp and they crouch in tense anticipation. Harry feels all of the cords in his arms and legs go painfully taut. Shadows appear on the floor of the airlock and George holds up a hand—two people, carrying something heavy between them. The moment they appear around the corner George snaps his hand forward and they leap out from around the corner. The poor technicians don’t even have a chance to yell out before both blasters are brought down hard on the backs of their heads. They crumple forward and their heavy scanning-whatsit hits the deck with a deafening clang.

George watches it for a fearful moment before— “You down there! Could you give us a hand with this?”

Harry’s eyebrows leap towards his hairline, but George is tugging him towards a new hiding spot, apparently unfazed by his feat of pulling a perfect Imperial accent. More tromping footsteps come jogging up the ramp, this time accompanied by a hiss of modulated mutterings about engineers. As before, George flicks his hand forward and they leap. They take the troopers by surprise and drag them out of sight of anyone who might happen to pass by the ship’s hatch. With their weapons holstered and a pair of arms wrenching around their necks between the joins of their armour and their helmets, the troopers go down relatively easily. And this time there is no one left to hear the crash.

“Bloody hell,” Harry gasps, leaning his hands on his knees. “What do we do now?”

“Now,” George says dryly, “we strip.”

“We  _ what?” _

“Strip. Get them out of this uniform and put it on yourself. You take that one, he’s smaller.”

Harry rolls his eyes when he hears Remus’ gentle laugh from behind him. He goes straight for the armour straps of the supposedly smaller trooper, flinging the plates away to get to the reinforced black underskin. He shrugs off his tunic and kicks off his boots and trousers, silently daring George Solo to make another comment. Thankfully or otherwise, none are forthcoming, though he refuses to look anywhere except the floor as he begins pulling on the trooper’s armour.

“…K-421, why aren’t you at your post?” says a sharp voice through the helmet the moment he slips it on. “TK-421, do you copy?”

Harry startles and flicks a brief glance between George, Chewbacca and Remus before shoving them towards the ramp and down to the hangar floor. He waits a moment before following, finding himself in a cavernous expanse of polished black and grey with no fugitive friends in sight. He looks up through the visor’s poor window at the viewports overlooking the deck and taps the side of his helmet with a finger.  _ Dodgy transmitter. _

The uniformed man staring down at him gives a nod and a salute before turning away. Harry looks around the hangar for another few seconds before spotting the back of Chewbacca’s furry head disappearing around a corner. He marches after them, unholstering his sidearm and holding it to his side at the ready. Sounds of blaster fire ring louder-than-life down the corridor he turns into, shocking him into a run towards the fight. When he gets to the control room the blast-proof door gapes wide open, allowing him a perfectly clear view of Remus, Chewbacca, the two droids and the back of George’s ginger head standing over two indisposed officers.

Harry darts into the room and slams his hand on the door control, ripping off his helmet as he hears it slide shut behind him.

_ “For kriff’s sake!” _ he hisses. “Between  _ his _ howling and your  _ blasting _ everything in sight, it’s a wonder the whole station doesn’t know we’re here!”

“Well they can bring it on!” George retorts nonsensically. “As much as I enjoy the stealth game, Potter, I’d much rather give this sorry lot a good bollocking straight-up.”

“Maybe  _ you _ have a death wish, but I want no such thing! We have a mission to accomplish here!”

At one of the consoles, Artoo begins to tilt himself from rotor to rotor, whistling loudly. At the next console over, Remus looks up sharply.

“Plug yourself in, Artoo,” he says. “See if you can find out where the tractor beam power unit is connected.”

“Can’t we just disconnect it from here?” Harry asks, jolted out of his disagreement quite effectively.

“They’ll have it back on us before we can even leave the hangar,” George says.

“We need to disconnect it at its source to make a clean escape,” Remus explains.

“Ah, yeah,” Harry mumbles. “Hadn’t thought of that.”

The room fills with the hum of machinery working overtime the moment Artoo punches his pronged connector into an open socket. A song and dance of lights flicker across the dashboard, monitors flashing messages briefly before cancelling them and going dark again. A little across the room, Chewbacca busies himself stringing up the gantry officer by his toes.

“He’s found it, sir!” Threepio announces when Artoo begins to beep and dance again. “The beam is coupled to the main reactor at seven locations. A power loss at one of the terminals will allow the ship to leave. Most of the pertinent data is restricted, but he’ll try to pull the nearest location up on the monitor now.”

One of the many screens flickers to life in the wall above. Lancing green schematics flicker across it, switching frames like old holo film until it settles on one, highlighted half-moon shape and expanding outwards. A path snakes in white from what appears to be their location to the power terminal.

Remus hums. “I don’t think you boys can help me with this. This, I must do alone.”

“Suits me,” George says, though the curious look in his eye suggests otherwise. “I’ve done more than I’d bargained for on this trip already.”

“I want to go with you,” Harry refutes. He fixes Remus with a determined stare and slips his lightsaber out of his utility belt.

“You must be patient, Harry. This requires skills that you haven’t yet mastered. Stay, look after the droids and wait for my signal—they must be delivered safely, or other star systems will suffer the same fate as Alderaan.” Remus pauses to bring Harry into a brief, warm hug. “Your destiny lies on a different path to mine.” He opens the door to the control room. “Trust in the Force, Harry. The Force will be with you—always.”

And then he is gone. Harry jabs the door release again and sighs. Behind him, Chewbacca groans and places his large fuzzy paws on his hips.

George snorts. “You can say that again.” He strolls over and leans against Chewie’s solid mass, watching Harry with interest. “Where in the Outer Rim’d you pick up  _ that _ old fossil?”

“Remus Lupin is a great man,” Harry argues, stalking towards him and crossing his arms. “And he’s not that old.”

“He looks like he’s been through hell and back. And the only thing he’s been  _ great _ at is getting us into trouble!”

“I distinctly remember that  _ you _ were the one who ignored him and went after that fighter.”

“Well, I don’t think his abracadabra nonsense is going to get us out of this one any time soon.”

“Oh, and you have so many better ideas? Like getting us killed, immediately?”

“Anything would be better than—”

Artoo shrills loudly and starts up a fresh round of rattling. Harry jumps when he realises how close he and George have become in their arguing and hurries to Artoo’s side.

“What’s wrong? What’s he found?”

“I…” says Threepio. “I’m afraid I’m not quite sure, sir. He keeps repeating ‘She’s here, she’s here, I’ve found her!’”

“Who? Who’s he found?”

“Why… Princess Hermione, sir. Senator Granger. They seem to be one and the same. I believe she is the author of the message he’s carrying.”

“The Princess?” Harry echoes, bringing to mind the cyrulian vision of the hologram. “She’s here?”

“Princess?” George asks. “What’s going on? What Princess?”

“Where? Where is she?”

Artoo whistles long and low, twittering away.

“The Detention Centre, sir. Level five, detention block AA-23.” Artoo makes a series of frazzles beeps. “I… I’m afraid she’s scheduled to be terminated.”

“No,” Harry breathes. “No, we—we have to  _ do _ something.”

“What are you  _ talking _ about?” George demands. He steps towards Harry at the same time Harry steps towards him.

“The droids belong to her,” Harry says, staring up at him imploringly. “She’s the one in the message, the one we’re taking them to. We have to help her.”

“The old man wants us to wait here,” George replies, his eyes narrowing. “And I am  _ not _ stepping one  _ foot _ near any detention centre.” 

Harry huffs and turns back to Artoo. “He didn’t know she was here, did he? He’d’ve changed his plans if he did.”

“Well, I don’t think I’m going anywhere,” George says. Harry looks up to see him lounging in an officer’s chair with his white-booted feet kicked up on the console.

“They’re going to  _ execute _ her. A few minutes ago you were complaining about sitting here, and now that’s all you want to do?”

George watches him with a peculiar gleam in his eye. “I’m not going anywhere near that detention area.”

Harry near-screams in frustration. “But they’re going to  _ kill _ her!”

George shrugs. “Better her than me.”

“Heartless bastard,” Harry mutters under his breath. George snorts and turns his chair to fiddle with the console. Beside them Chewie groans and snuffles. Harry thinks about it, thinks desperately for something that could motivate George Solo. George Solo, the playboy with a stupid, reckless attitude. George Solo, a damn good pilot with a jerry-rigged ship full of pirated stock. 

“She’s rich,” he says abruptly. 

“I’m sure she is, Potter,” George replies, waving vaguely over his shoulder to indicate the hangar. “If, by that, you meant she  _ was.” _

Harry turns to lean over the back of his chair. “She’s a princess.”

“I got that much.  _ And _ she’s a politician.”

“And a part of the rebellion. Come on, I’m sure she’ll get you a big reward.”

“Well she’d better,” George grumbles. He stands quickly enough that Harry almost topples over the chair in its sudden weightlessness. “I’ve cleared as many of the corridors between us and her as I could—hand me those binders, will you?—and we already have our disguises.”

“Wait,” Harry splutters. “You’ll go?”

George turns to him with a sharply arched brow. “Didn’t you say she’s up for execution?”

“Well, yeah—”

“So then we’d better get  _ going, _ shouldn’t we?”

Harry blinks at George and his complete one-eighty. George shakes his head and raises his hands as if to say, ‘What?’ before sighing and striding up to Harry to snatch the binders off his belt himself.

“Were you  _ having me on?” _

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he denies. “Here, Chewie, let me put these on you… No, don’t worry—come on, you could snap these with one finger. Yes, all right, fine, but just get it over with and save the Princess first.” Chewie’s protesting growls become lower and more cynical in tone as he lets George fix the binders around his wrists.

“Er, Master Harry, sir,” Threepio begins. “Pardon me for asking, but what should Artoo and I do if we’re discovered here?” Snapping out of his disbelieving daze, Harry feels a grin take over his face as he reaches for his and George’s stolen helmets. 

“Lock the door,” he replies in an inappropriately light tone.

“And hope they don’t have blasters,” George adds. He smiles when Harry hands him his helmet. Harry shakes his head and moves to the door, waiting for Chewie and George to take up position before he hits the release.

“Honestly, that isn’t very reassuring,” Threepio mutters disparagingly behind them. The door slides open as Artoo whistles his response, and just as they’re stepping out into the corridor a dull thud of metal on metal rings out behind them. Harry does his best not to laugh as he repositions his helmet and slips his sidearm from its holster.

Well, he did say he was looking for adventure.


	4. IV

The journey started out well. Most of the main corridors they could bypass quite easily by taking an extra few turns, meaning fewer people and fewer inquisitive stares. But as they find themselves marching deeper and deeper into the station, they find it increasingly difficult to maintain an air of deceptively calm indifference. Fortunately, most sensible people would put their skittishness down to their huge, intimidating Wookie of a captive, who at the same time is making it impossible to stay strictly ‘inconspicuous.’ Despite George’s efforts to clear their path, foot traffic becomes heavier and heavier the farther they go. Harry counts them lucky that Chewie’s falsely morose demeanour and his and George’s apparent confidence are enough to satisfy pretty much every passing gawker.

A mouse droid comes rolling down a quiet corridor. It stops at their feet and rolls back a little, but otherwise forces them to halt else trip on the little thing. Chewbacca snuffles and lets out an irritated roar, sending the poor droid streaking back the way it came in a string of squeaking whistles. Harry pats Chewie’s arm placatingly before prompting them to continue on.

The next room, finally, is the long bank of lifts they’ve been looking for. Technicians, officers, troopers and droids hurry past, giving the trio barely a glance until one KX-series stops on heavy shoes in front of them.

“I shall relieve you of the prisoner,” it announces in an utterly toneless mechanical voice.

“No, thank you,” George barks. “Continue with your business.”

The droid regards them with a stoic and yet somehow unimpressed stare. “It is my duty to escort dangerous prisoners and minimise any unnecessary risk posed to the Imperial taskforce.”

“Yeah? Well I said you can leave. We have our orders.”

Harry tries to look around as subtly as he can manage. People are beginning to take notice and stare. He has to almost bodily restrain himself from fidgeting.

“But I—”

“I said _leave.”_

“Sir, I cannot allow you to do that,” the droid insists.

The armour over George’s chest expands largely and deflates. “Fine! Come with us. Just don’t get in my way.”

“Affirmative.”

The Kay droid takes hold of Chewie’s arm. Chewie roars at it and tries to tear himself out of its grip but it holds fast. George whirls on his heel and points a sharp finger at his friend.

“You calm down!”

Chewie roars at him, too, before relenting. Harry swallows through a parched throat and finds his chest burning from a long-held breath. It seems that fate might really be messing with them when the lift within arm’s reach is the next to ding and slide its doors open. Three officers step out, sidling away from the Wookie as quickly as possible, but give them no trouble.

“In,” George orders. The Kay droid takes Chewie inside first, leaving George and Harry to step in after.

“Level five, detention block AA-23,” Harry recites weakly into the pickup grid. One harried officer comes rushing across the deck in an attempt to board with them. George holds out a hand and he stops immediately, sidestepping to the next lift over. The doors close around them in a metal cocoon of foreboding and then they’re on the move, Harry’s gut swooping nauseatingly as they drop several floors at once in a quick descent.

Several minutes later, the lift slows to a stop and the door behind them hisses open. George and Harry turn in mild confusion and hurry to follow the Kay droid into the detention block. One security officer stands in the midst of a flower of five console panels with two guards at attention on the back wall. To their either side and straight in front are seemingly endless, straight, squareish corridors, down which Harry can just about make out the equally endless rows of faceless cell doors.

“Where are you taking this… thing?” asks the security officer.

Harry inhales sharply, and yet finds himself responding almost on autopilot. “Prisoner transport from block TS-138.”

The officer gives him a puzzled look. “I wasn’t notified. I’ll have to clear it.” He gestures to the guards and turns to a console on his right. The two guards march at once to their sides, blasters raised. As soon as the first gets close enough, Chewie explodes into a gut-wrenching howl. He flings the unsuspecting and massive Kay droid into the two approaching guards, breaking through the binders as if they were made from paper.

“Look out, he’s loose!” George shouts, and he and Harry immediately leap back and begin blasting. Of course, though their fear is true, their surprise barely-faked, and their enthusiasm commendable, their aim is _sincerely_ abominable. Not a single shot makes contact with the not-particularly-mobile Wookie, who is now engaged in a fraught wrestle with the Kay droid. Instead, they destroy innumerous cameras, energy field generators, and blast the two dumbfounded guards into the walls. The security officer, who finally seems to realise that their aim is just a little too efficient in its destruction for pure coincidence, reaches for the general alarm on the opposite console. Harry turns in time to catch him with a blast to the midriff before his fingers can reach the panel, instead dropping limp to the cold grey floor.

George lunges for the comlink squalling an anxious call alarm into the fray. Harry doesn’t think a background ambiance of Wookie-versus-droid is going to do him any good, especially when the droid appears to be gaining the upper hand, so he cocks his blaster and takes aim. 

“Chewie, I can’t get a shot!” he says. Chewie wails and slams the droid clinging to his neck against the wall. “I’ll hit you!”

“We’ve got to find the cell this princess of yours is in,” George mutters, covering the link with his hand and scrabbling at the opposite panel. “Come on, come on…” 

“Come on, Chewie!” Harry says with heavier desperation. Chewie twists, fails to trip the droid, and instead bends right the way forward with a harrowing yell. The droid flies upwards and over his head with the momentum, crashing down deafeningly on the metal sheeting. Harry fires off three shots right to the chest. When the smoke clears, there’s a glowing, sizzling orange hole where its core motor modules were. Its limbs are unmoving and its ocular units have gone dark.

“Here she is! Cell two-one-eight-seven!” George calls. “Go—Chewie and I’ll hold the fort.”

Harry nods and stumbles to the nearest corridor, the right-hand run of cells, tripping over a stray limb by one of the steps up. Behind him, George responds to the squawking com. 

“Er, everything’s fine here, situation normal!” he hears him report. A tinny reply warbles inaudibly. The first doors on this hallway are marked 3100 and 3101, 3102 and 3103. Harry runs back the way he came and heads for the central run.

“We, uh, had a slight mishap with a malfunctioning droid, but, er, everything’s fine now… Perfectly fine… We’re all rather fine here, actually, now you mention it. How are you?”

Harry stops in his tracks to shoot a horrified look at George, his jaw dropping in sheer incredulity. He watches the pilot cringe and screw up his face at his own mistake for a moment before shaking himself and scrambling up into the cell block. 2100 and 2101, 2102 and 2103. This is the one.

“Er—negative, negative!” George’s voice says faintly. “We’re totally fine here, as I said! Beautiful day out, too. Don’t you just love the unpredictable chaos of a newly formed asteroid field?”

A scuffle of thermoplastic, a single blaster shot.

“HURRY IT UP HARRY, WE’RE ABOUT TO HAVE COMPANY!”

_2167… 2175… 2183—_

“GOT IT!” Harry yells back. He practically throws himself at the door marked 2187, slamming his fist down on the release and tumbling through when the metal gives way beneath him.

The cell is dark, outfitted entirely in black with no discernable light source. On a raised section of bulkhead along the back wall is a pale shadow of a white robe draping down towards the ground. As Harry stumbles into the cell the light spills in behind him, revealing the resting girl lying curled on the bulkhead in full. She jolts upright and alert within a fraction of a second, staring at him with dark, wide eyes.

“You’re…” Whatever Harry tries to say, it’s lost to the abrupt vacuity of his thoughts as he lays eyes on her. The Princess, however, frowns.

“Aren’t you a little short, for a stormtrooper?” she asks.

“What?” Harry asks her stupidly. “Oh—this.” He tugs off the helmet and shakes his head to help adjust to having a full field of view. He fumbles at his belt for a moment before he pulls out his glasses and shoves them onto his nose. “I’m Harry Potter; we’re here to rescue you.”

The Princess blinks. “I’m sorry, you’re who?”

“Harry—never mind that!” Harry says. “We’re rescuing you! We have your Artoo unit, I’m here with Remus Lupin.”

“Remus Lupin?” she gasps. Her expression brightens with determination and her halo of curls drifts around her face as she springs to her feet. “Lupin! Where is he?”

“Come on, we’ll take you to him.”

Harry ushers the Princess from the cell and they begin the long sprint down the hallway back towards the control room. Blaster fire follows and echoing crash and a shriek of shearing metal, and George and Chewie come careening down the hallway to meet them.

“Can’t get out that way!” George shouts, almost colliding with Harry. 

“What?” Hermione demands sharply. “This is a _detention area!_ You’ve cut off our only escape route!”

George takes the time to raise his eyebrows at her sarcastically. “Begging your forgiveness, Your Highness! Would you prefer we take you back to your cell?” 

She shouts at him in wordless annoyance.

“There has to be another way out,” Harry mutters. “There has to…”

Red jets of blaster fire ricochet off the support beams a few doors down. The four of them duck and crush themselves behind opposing supports of the nearest cell doors. Harry scrambles for his comlink as he pulls the Princess behind him. 

“Threepio, See-Threepio!” he calls while George and Chewie begin their offensive retaliation. “Are there any other ways out of the detention area? Anything, anything at all?” The com crackles with static and a garbled rambling. “Wait, what? I didn’t copy!”

“I _said,”_ cuts through the cacophony, “that all systems have been alerted to your presence, sir! The main entrance seems to be the only way in or out of the cell block. All other data on your level is restricted.”

The smoke in the corridor has grown too thick for either George or Chewie to be able to pick out their targets. The upside of this of course is that the same goes for the troopers at the other end, any brave souls of which who trample into the unknown and expose themselves swiftly join the growing pile of bodies on the grates at their feet.

“There isn’t another way out!” Harry shouts across the corridor chasm. He shoves away his com and tugs his blaster from its holster, joining the barrage. Chewie groans woefully.

“We can’t hold out forever!” George snaps.

“This is some rescue!” huffs an irritated voice in Harry’s ear. His blaster is ripped from his grip and he spins around to see Hermione’s fiery gaze level down its barrel to aim at a grate just behind George’s knees. When she fires the grate practically disintegrates under the heat, leaving a dripping hole over a shaft so deep none of them can see to the bottom.

“What the bloody hell are you _doing?”_ George shrieks, jumping away from the grate.

“Saving your life!” she replies shortly. She turns the blaster towards their attackers and steps out into the corridor, firing away as she crosses to George and Chewie’s side. “It’s a rubbish chute, you can either follow me or get shot!”

With that, she chucks the blaster back at Harry, swings herself feet-first into the chute and disappears. George flicks a shocked look between Chewie and Harry before resuming his covering fire. “Go on, get in!” he shouts at Chewie who screams something awful in complaint. “I don’t care what you smell down there, you heard the lady!”

Chewie’s howling fades away as he disappears down the bottomless shaft. Harry and George keep up their fire for a few moments longer, doing their best to force the troopers back towards the control desk.

“Wonderful girl!” George shouts conversationally. “Either I’m beginning to like her, or I’m about this close to killing her myself!” He doesn’t hold up two poised fingers like Harry otherwise assumes he would, but he doesn’t really need to. “Get in there, Potter!”

Harry ducks low to the floor, beneath the main stream of blaster fire, and flings himself through the hole head-first.

For the longest, heart-stopping few seconds of his life, Harry knows three things: that this chute is kriffing _dark,_ it’s _cold,_ and that it’s very bloody small. And that it goes on forever. Four things. Four terrible, horrible things that he’s almost too glad to see the end of, even when he lands in a pile of hard-edged scrap that sinks in a disturbing way beneath his weight.

Still, “Why the hell is it squishy?” should probably not have been the first thing out of his mouth, in all honesty.

A delicate snort echoes around the tall ceiling of the rubbish dump. “Harry, is it?” the Princess says. “You might want to move before your friend comes through and squishes _you.”_

Harry feels his whole body cringe when a reverberating whoop of glee emanates from the mouth of the chute. He shuffles away from his landing spot as quickly as he can, tipping onto the floor and finding himself knee-deep in scummy water. Before he even has time to retch at the smell and the slime, George drops like a limby, flailing stone from the ceiling and crashes into the pile on his back. He hisses expletives and slides off a large, broken section of bendy pipeline. Chewie groans at him from where he’s furiously yanking on the turning-wheel mechanism of the large and only hatch. Harry adjusts his (thankfully, unbroken) glasses and tries not to think about the muck he’s wading through.

“The rubbish chute!” George laughs, his smile wide and probably genuine, the loon. “Wonderful idea! Oh, and an incredible smell to go with. How terribly unfortunate that we can’t simply ride out of here on drifting odour… Someone should invent a vehicle that does that, you know. Helluva gap in the market I’m sure.”

Princess Hermione clings to the opposing heap of scrap and rubbish as she balances on the wrecked body of a droid. Her pursed and twisted lips convey her disgust for her surroundings, though she has the dignity not to complain out loud.

“All right, get away from it Chewie,” George says. Chewie steps aside and George raises his blaster.

“No— _wait!”_ Hermione shouts, but it’s too late; George’s blaster shot bounces off the metal door and ricochets around the room. The four cower into the rubbish heaps and thank their lucky stars that the shot heads upwards before dissipating and not down.

“We already tried that!” she snaps. “It’s magnetically sealed! Now put that thing away before you kill us all!”

“Par-don,” George says, pseudo-mocking, as he reholsters his weapon. “Well, I’m sure they’ll figure out what happened to us soon enough. Let’s have a little convene and see if we can find a way out, shall we?”

Hermione opens her mouth to retort but is cut off by a hollering, groaning roar. Chewie yowls and flattens himself to a wall. A small current of water laps at Harry’s right shin. He stares down at it in abject horror.

“What was that?” Hermione whispers.

“I don’t know,” George whispers back.

“I think,” Harry croaks. “I think something just moved past my leg. I think there’s something _alive_ in here.”

“It’s, er, it’s just your imagination,” George says, but he doesn’t sound very sure. Just behind him, Harry spots something long and thin and glistening disappear under the water.

“Look! Right there!” he hisses.

_“What?”_

Chewie returns to his upheaval at the door with added distressed snuffling. Hermione tries to climb backwards up the quivering rubbish heap at her back, her eyes fixed on the flood. Rubble and glittering scraps ripple around their legs as George and Harry take tiny, nervous steps to keep turning on the spot. Harry has only the faintest warning of a cascade of water over his shin pad before something thick and unthinkably strong winds its way whip-fast around his leg and yanks. 

He drops to the floor like a sack of grain. A huge rush of water closes over him—his ears, his mouth, his nose—and he’s tugged along a floor coarse with corrosion. His hands are torn between holding onto his glasses and grappling with the muscular tentacle adhering to his calf, so he settles for thrashing and resisting the feeling of being dragged. The voice of his panicked thoughts is all but drowned out by the rasp of water in his ears.

Just about managing to get his feet under him, Harry forces himself upwards and through the surface. Hermione and George’s shouts immediately come into focus, but unfortunately so does the second tentacle that wraps itself around his neck.

“Do—something!” he chokes, his eyes squeezed tightly against the run of disgusting water from his hair and the crushing pain of his constricted throat. There’s a flash of silver metal and between one instant and the next the tentacles are loosening their hold and dropping away. The creature, whatever it is, bellows.

Harry falls back onto his hands and gasps for breath. “What… _was_ that thing?”

“No bloody clue,” George murmurs, kneeling in front of him. “You all right, Potter?”

“Fine,” Harry assures hoarsely. His leg isn’t broken, his throat isn’t crushed, and he still has his glasses. “What did you do?”

George holds up a small knife blade and grins. “I cut you free.”

Harry looks from him to the knife and back. “You’re mad.”

“I know. But don’t worry, I wiped the slime off on you. Now, come on—”

The whole room seems to shudder around them. A distant rumble of heavy machinery starts up somewhere parallel to them; the two walls on either side crunch and grind and judder inwards by an inch or so before they stop and everything falls silent again. Harry holds very still and watches his companions. A cold dread washes down his skin like the last dregs of stagnant water.

“I have a very bad feeling about this,” George murmurs.

It’s as if his wish comes true.

Chewie howls over the kick-restart of the distant machinery. The moving walls begin their slow creep towards them again, making the three humans jump and back towards each other in the centre of the mess. This time, nothing stops.

“Well—don’t just stand there!” Hermione commands shrilly. “Try to-to brace it with something!”

Harry, George and Chewie scramble with her up the heap for anything long, rigid and substantial. They try discarded item after item, but even with Chewie’s considerable strength and their fear-driven determination, not one piece of scrap succeeds at slowing the encroaching walls. They’re mocked with every crumpled, snapped and shorn off object that’s flung back in their faces. Chewie makes to hold the walls back with his bare hands even as Hermione and George continue frantically piling up the durasteel.

Harry turns instead to his com, shaking it and smacking it against his opposite hand when all he gets in return is static.

“THREEPIO!” he yells. “THREEPIO, COME _IN,_ THREEPIO!”

Nothing. More static. Not even a click of acknowledgement. What only could have happened to them is beyond Harry’s current capacity for thought, which has quite understandably been reduced to _we’re going to be crushed to death, oh hell, oh hell, oh hell._

_“THREEPIO!”_

“Well, one thing’s for certain—we’re all going to be a good sight thinner than we were when we fell in,” George says. The usual joking tone of his voice is flat and strained. “This could be one of the new slimming fads of the season. The only catch might be its propensity to crush you to death instead.”

“Threepio,” Harry begs the com. The walls are almost an arm’s length away on each side. He can hear the Princess crying out in discomfort as the piling rubbish is compounded around her middle. Harry stumbles as the unstable mound shifts between his feet. 

“All right?” George asks quietly, clamping a hand around his arm and reeling him in. Harry takes a shaky breath and tries to nod. “Yeah, me neither.” He turns and reaches out to haul Hermione out of her quickly-closing prison. “Come on, Princess, _pull.”_

“I am!” she cries. “I am pulling!”

“We’re going to die,” Harry whispers.

“No—we’re— _not!”_ George pants. He latches onto the princess’ waist and takes one big heave of a tug. She screams slightly as she comes free and tumbles onto the crest of the wave of rising rubbish. The walls are closing in on Harry’s shoulders, now. 

“We are,” he says. Chewie screams in fury.

“Harry!” George shouts. He snaps his gloved fingers ineffectually in Harry’s face. “Try the comlink again.”

Harry raises the com to his mouth in a trembling hand. “Threepio, please come in. Come on, Threepio, _please—”_

The grinding stops. Silence rings through the room like a deafening bell.

“What?” murmurs Hermione.

“Is it…?”

“Oh hell, they did it!” George cries. Chewie roars in celebration. He’s right, the walls have stopped.

“Oh, thank the _gods,”_ Hermione laughs wetly. She wilts into her bed of discarded scrap and does a very good impression of crying with relief for someone who isn’t. Harry struggles out of his well of compressed scrap and drags himself over to them.

“Come on, let’s see if they’ve unlocked the door for us.”

“Way ahead of you, Potter,” George says. Harry shuffles to the edge of the scrap and peers down into the recess of the hatch. George grins up at him and extends a hand. “Jump. Chewie’ll catch you.”

“Of course he will,” Harry mutters. He takes George’s hand and jumps, landing lightly on his feet in a space that is decidedly smaller than he’d thought it would be. Chewie helps Hermione down as Harry and George work on rotating the hatch wheel. It spins so easily now that it would be a slap in the face if they weren’t all so drained by the adrenaline of unstoppable near-death. When the door swings open and they all collapse onto the cool floor of the corridor to gasp in the fresh-scented recycled air… Well, who can blame them.

*** * ***

The corridor is silent and cold and covered in a fine layer of dust. The more they move the more it kicks up into the air around them, tickling Harry’s nose and making him want to sneeze. Chewie groans as they heave him through the small hatchway and onto the floor that’s now splattered with watery gunk. 

“Ugh,” George grunts. “I’m not sure I want to do that one again.”

“What do you mean, ‘not sure’?” scoffs the Princess. “That has to be one of the most horrible things I’ve ever done in my life.”

“Then you clearly haven’t seen _anything_ yet, darling.” George reaches around to begin unclipping his armour, letting each piece drop to the floor with a clatter. From the inside of his chest piece he retrieves his shirt, vest, trousers and belt. “They already know we’re here,” he says in response to Hermione’s look of skepticism. “We might as well be comfortable.”

With a sigh, Harry follows his lead and throws aside his armour plating. His skin-tight under armour is sopping wet and clinging uncomfortably so he grits his teeth and strips that too.

“They have procedures for that, you know.” Harry looks up at the Princess in confusion. Even through water-blurred glasses he can see her frowning at the bandages wrapped around his chest. He looks away and feels his neck flush hotly.

“He’s a Tatooine farm boy,” George says lightly. “I don’t think they know what surgeons and healers are.”

“Oi,” Harry grumbles. “Shut up. I know what they are. But the ones where I lived weren’t exactly what you’d call trustworthy.”

“I’m only teasing,” he grins. “Everyone knows that you’re better off stitching yourself up on that dustball.”

“So that’s how you ended up with Artoo,” Hermione says. “Were you close to General Lupin?”

“Not really,” Harry says. “He was just Old John from the West Dune Sea. The jawas picked up your droids and sold them to my—” The memory of two blackened, twisted bodies leaps to the forefront of his mind and sends his gut wrenching nauseously. “My uncle.”

Hermione peers at him while he pulls on his damp tunic and tries his best to clean his glasses. “Did something happen?”

He swallows. “Artoo escaped and went to find Remus. We… When I got back home the Empire had already tracked the droids there. They burned the whole farm.”

“Shit,” George mutters. “Harry, that’s awful.”

“It’s—” The word ‘fine’ dies on Harry’s tongue. It’s not fine. Two people still died. Dudley doesn’t have parents to go home to. Shit—Dudley. He doesn’t even _know._ “They never liked me anyway,” he settles for. “All I’d ever wanted was to leave that place. I’m here now.”

“Still,” Hermione whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

Harry can’t bear to look at the pity and remorse on her face. He doesn’t want it. It’s hard enough to hear it in her voice. He bends down to retrieve TK-421’s utility belt and fasten it around his waist. “Come on, we have to get back to the ship. Remus is probably wondering where we are by now.”

“Right you are,” George says. Now back in his normal, much more suitable clothes, he hoists his blaster onto his shoulder and shoots them all a lopsided grin. “Shoot first, ask questions later, right?”

Hermione purses her lips and exhales loudly through her nose. “Right. I don’t know who you are or where you came from, but I _am_ grateful for you both breaking me out of there. From now on, though, I highly suggest you do as I tell you—and that does _not_ include firing willy-nilly all over the place so the whole station can hear you!”

“All right, all right, calm down,” George chuckles. His eyebrows have climbed his forehead in what Harry can assume is both amusement and surprise. “You know it’s not often I let other people order me around, and even then, it’s never outside of the bedroom.”

“You!” the Princess exclaims. “You’re incorrigible!”

“Er, can we get going?”

“Yes, yes, let’s go.” Hermione stalks past Harry and Chewie and starts off down the corridor. Harry somehow doubts she knows where she’s going, but then again, neither do they, so at this point they might as well just follow her. He glances to George and rolls his eyes at his self-satisfied smirk.

“I change my mind,” he says. “I love this woman. Come on, Harry. Princess! Wait for us!”

Harry shakes his head and jogs after them. They walk for what might be miles down this disused, dusty maintenance corridor. The only sounds they hear are the clankings of far-off machinations, the humming of the atmo vents, and the gentle clipping of their boots on the gleaming metal flooring. When they finally reach the end of the corridor they’re met with a faceless door and a simple panel with one button. George shrugs and hits the button, frowning when nothing happens right away. He presses it a second time and then a third, but still nothing.

“You don’t think it’s jammed, do you?” he asks. “I’m not sure Her Eminence will approve of us blasting it down.”

“I don’t know,” Harry says before the Princess can have another go at him. “I think—”

The door slides open without any further prompting. Behind it is a small boxy room—a lift.

“Well, that explains it,” Hermione says. She steps into the lift and looks over at them expectantly. 

“Which level were we on?” Harry asks George.

“I, er… I don’t know,” George replies guiltily. “Chewie?”

Chewie rumbles and shakes his head. Harry feels like kicking the lift wall but doesn’t on the basis that he’s more likely to break his foot than anything else. He digs the communicator unit out of his belt and flicks it on.

“Threepio,” he says into it. “Threepio, do you copy?”

A crackles of static. A pause. “Sir? Is that you?”

“Threepio! Where have you been? We were trying to reach you!”

“Oh, Harry sir, I’m so glad you’re all right! When Artoo told me you were in the compactor I—”

“We’re fine, we’re fine,” Harry says. “Can you tell us which level the ship is on? We’re in a maintenance lift off the corridor outside the compactor.”

“Certainly, sir. Artoo, where are we?” In the background, a few beeps and whistles. “Ah yes. Level ninety-seven, sir, docking bay one-three-two-nine.”

Before Harry, George or Hermione can open their mouths to speak into the receiving grid, the door of the lift slides shut and it begins to move upwards. 

“Threepio!” Harry shouts. “The lift’s moving!”

“Oh, don’t worry sir,” comes the dry response. “Artoo seems to have taken it upon himself to do all the heavy lifting for you.”

The lift door opens and all four occupants hold their breath. Silence rings around them. They’re alone.

“Thank you, you two,” Harry murmurs into the com. “How do we get to you?”

“Take the next left and walk until you get to the four-way junction. We can guide you from here.”

It takes half an hour for Threepio to direct them back to the hangar. With the featureless, uniform construction of the station, it isn’t until Hermione makes a passing glance through a small viewport that they have any clue as to where they are.

“You came in… _That?”_ she asks hesitantly. George and Harry lean over her shoulder and sigh relief when they see the _Millennium Falcon_ in prime place in the middle of the hangar floor.

“Why?” George asks. “Is there something wrong?”

“No, no,” the Princess flusters. “I was just thinking that it was very brave of you to come here at all.”

“Well, we hardly meant to get captured.”

“Oh, you know what I mean!”

“I can’t see you, Threepio,” Harry says into the com. “Where are you?”

“Right below you, sir. If you’ll carry on along the next corridor…”

“Let’s not hang around,” George says. 

Rounding the corner, he, Harry, Hermione and Chewie come to an abrupt, shocked halt. The two-dozen stormtroopers marching towards them from the other end of the corridor do likewise. It seems that shoot first really is George’s knee-jerk reaction, as without warning he levels his blaster and takes off running towards the troopers, yelling an incoherent war cry. Startled by the unexpected assault the troopers begin to stumble backwards, scattering in a turn-tail retreat when George fires off several shots. Two troopers hit the floor.

“GET BACK TO THE SHIP!” George yells over his shoulder.

 _“WHAT_ ARE YOU DOING?” Hermione screams after him.

“GEORGE!” Harry shouts. “GEORGE, COME BACK!”

But George does not come back. He and his absolutely mental grinning yells disappear around the next corner. Chewie howls and runs after his best friend, and Harry’s only stopped from following by a strong hand around his arm.

“Harry, you can’t!” Hermione says.

“But they’re gonna kill him!”

“He’s a pirate, isn’t he?” she argues. Her eyes are wide and fearful. “I’m sure he can look after himself! He certainly is courageous.”

“He certainly is an _idiot!”_ Harry yells.

“He said to get back to the ship Harry. _We need to get back to the ship.”_

“Fine!” he says. “Fine. This way, then.”

They turn and run back the way they came. It seems that with every new corridor they turn into more troopers arrive, chasing them mercilessly deeper into the warren of identical passageways. Every time it seems they manage to shake a squadron another one turns up to take its place, sending ricocheting bolts of blaster fire above their heads. It’s not very long before they’re faced with the inevitable horror of pursuing footsteps behind clashing with the sound of approaching footsteps up ahead, and it’s Hermiona who only just about manages to haul them into a fairly obscured maintenance passage before either side come bearing down upon them.

The corridor is long and runs a slightly curved gradient to their left. It means that, while they know no troopers are coming towards them, they can neither know nor see where the end of the corridor is. So when they finally come across a simple hatch door and unhesitatingly dash through it, both Harry and Hermione almost go careening over the edge of a retracted catwalk and into a Tartarus pit of black durasteel walls.

“Shit!” he gasps, windmilling the arm Hermione isn’t clinging to and trying to regain his balance. Behind them, the sound of boots on metal is growing closer and closer. Hermione flings out a hand to hit the door release panel just beside them. The hatch falls shut with a clang and the sound of splattering blaster bolts echoes through from the other side.

“There’s no lock,” Hermione whispers breathlessly. Harry pulls her into the opposite corner of the door and points his blaster at the panel, turning his body around to shield her before he shoots.

“That should hold them a while.”

“Right,” Hermione says uncertainly. “Well, we need to find a way to get across, and quickly, because you just blasted the controls to the bridge!”

The atmo-circulation chasm is a sheer wall of impassive durasteel, occasionally striped with tiny dots of light. Opposite them is the rest of the passageway, though the gap seems much too tremendous to even contemplate crossing. Just as Harry lifts a hand from the Princess’ waist to push against his forehead in a panic, his sleeve catches on something in his utility belt. He steps back and glances down at the offender and finds himself looking an inspiring and completely mental little tool dead in the eye.

Fresh, startlingly crisp blaster fire almost frightens Harry over the edge anyway. He leaps out of sight of the troopers at the doorway above them and cowers next to Hermione behind the short recess wall. She wrenches the blaster out of his hands when he nearly short-circuits trying to decide between firing back and retrieving the grappling hook, shoves him behind her and begins laying on a covering fire. The hook is small but solid and the wire thin but military grade, perfectly capable of handling a weight similar to that of Chewbacca’s and so more than enough for himself and the Princess. He rips the coil free of its compartment and steps out as far as he dares, beginning to whirl the small hook around his head on a growing length of string. Once he lets go the hook sails up, up, and up through the air. It clatters against a number of cylindrical conduits overhanging the wall and falls downwards, a dead weight through the increasingly-unhelpful false grav of the station.

Harry forces himself to be patient as he reels the wire back in. Hermione is yelling at him now, the heat of the melting metal door at their backs and the driving motivation of the searing blaster fire at their fronts. He orbits the hook again, flinging it with more force and a silent, desperate plea. The hook flies upwards and over the rim of a set of thin pipes running down the centre of the chasm. It falls far enough on the other side for the remaining wire to catch it in its path as it swings back, and when the hook grinds all the way back up to form a solid loop around the pipe Harry feels like he could yell with relief. The tensed wire shows no sign of giving under the weight he tests on and it he hastily wraps it several times around his waist and arm.

“Come here,” he beckons to the Princess. “We need to jump.”

“What?” Hermione says, ducking behind the wall and looking at him, frightened, over the barrel of her smoking blaster. “Oh, I don’t like this!”

“They’re coming through!” Harry hisses. The door is indeed beginning to run molten at its centre, the metal there visibly thinned. Hermione takes one fearful breath and throws herself at him. Her arms wrap nearly as tightly as the tentacle alien’s did around his neck. He winds his free arm around her back and takes two steps away from the ledge, until he can feel the heat begin to sear at his back. He runs forward and leaps.

The cable goes taut and they swing out into the ravine. The wire cuts instantly and severely into his forearm. Blaster fire whizzes behind them. Harry’s feet hit the ledge of the opposite catwalk and he forces the rest of his body after it, tumbling to safety with the Princess still clinging to him.

“Oh my goodness,” she breathes into his ear. “Don’t _ever_ make me do that again!”

“Sorry, My Lady,” Harry says, a little taken aback and shaking with adrenaline just the same. “Are you, er…”

Hermione jolts upright and begins to unwind herself, stepping back to the floor from where her thighs had taken to his waist. “Sorry.” 

Behind them, the door melts through enough for the pursuing troopers to aim a blaster. Hermione helps yank the cables away from Harry and takes him by the arm, running off down the rest of the corridor and away from the death-riddled chasm.

“Threepio!” Harry says, scrabbling for his com. “Threepio, where are we?”

“Oh dear, sir,” Threepio replies. “It appears that there aren’t enough cameras in your quadrant for Artoo to find you. Your last known location was at a turning before the system’s main atmosphere vent.”

“We crossed it! How do we get back to you?”

“Oh, that makes things much easier! Now, you’ll want to take the third right after the next interface console and another immediately after that…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIP TK-421, you shall be missed king
> 
> (If you haven't, read From A Certain Point of View, it's brilliant)


	5. V

Harry stows the com away the moment they turn into the last corridor into the hangar. At the other end, crouched beside the wide-open doorway through which they have plain view of the  _ Falcon, _ are George and Chewbacca. A wonderful sight indeed.

“George,” Harry greets warmly, skidding to join their party by the door. “Chewie, you’re all right!”

“Course we are,” George grins. “What took you two so long?”

“Oh, you know,” Hermione grinds out. “Just ran into some  _ old friends.” _

“Is the ship all right?” Harry asks. At the bottom of the landing ramp is a squadron of almost a dozen troopers.

“Seems so…” George tells him. “I don’t think they’ve taken anything off or on or messed with her engines, so she’ll be all right. I just hope the old man got that tractor beam out of commission.”

As if summoned by his mention, a clash of bright lights flares in the gloom of the main hangar door. Even in the little Harry can see of it, he would be hard-pushed to miss Remus in his thinning brown robes whirl into sight locked in an intense trading of blows with a lithe, dark shadow of a figure. Beside him, Hermione gasps.

“Vader!” she says. “It’s Vader!”

Harry is only stopped from rushing out into the hangar by two firm arms that wrap painfully around his shoulders and chest. He’s dragged back into the shadow of the hall and held against the body confining him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” George hisses in his ear.

“Let me  _ go!” _ Harry growls.

“Are you mad? They’ll kill you before you can take a second step!”

“That man killed my parents!” Harry insists, writhing.  _ “Let—me—go!” _

“No  _ fucking _ way, Potter!” George replies. Chewie moans in agreement next to him. “I am  _ not _ going to let you go running in to kill yourself!”

“What would you even do?” Hermione implores. “If the troopers don’t shoot you, Vader’s the most powerful being I’ve ever seen! Do you even know how to use that thing?”

Harry looks down at the lightsaber that’s made its way into his hands. “Remus has taught me some!”

“From what I saw on the ship, you picked that thing up yesterday!” George snaps lowly. “Now stop kicking up a fuss and throwing away all of Lupin’s work!”

Harry freezes and goes limp in George’s arms. “I didn’t…”

“I know. Now come on. If I let you go do you promise not to run away? The troopers are leaving, we’re losing our chance to get back on the ship.”

Harry nods and stumbles when George drops him back to the floor more quickly than he’d expected. He doesn’t put his saber away, seeing as Hermione still has his blaster, but he does step back into line with the others. George is right: troopers are leaving in entire squadrons to hover in case of assistance by the hangar door. The last ones remain at the base of the  _ Falcon’s _ ramp, but even they are looking anxiously over their shoulders. It’s not long at all before their leader gestures away and they begin to take off.

“Now’s our chance,” George hisses. “Go, go go!”

The four of them sprint out of the shadowed hallway into the bright lights of the docking bay. They’re maybe halfway to the ship before Harry glances over at the ensuing fight and almost trips over his own feet. Remus is looking straight at them. His expression weighs more seriously than Harry’s seen yet,  _ including _ when he was talking about his parents. 

This one moment of inattention seems to give Vader all the opening he needs; with one clean, efficient downward strike, Remus is struck in two. The outline of his robe flutters and falls boneless to the floor. It is empty.

_ “NO!” _ Harry screams. He does not care for the platoon of soldiers less than fifty feet away. All he can see in that moment is the empty pile of brown robes on the floor, the lightsaber hilt slowly rolling its way along the polished floor, and the looming shadow of Vader staring equally as disbelievingly down at where Remus should lie.

Of course, as soon as the shout leaves his mouth, every single trooper turns on their heels to fire upon them. The saber in his hand ignites before he really knows what’s happening. A wall of glowing blue slices the paths of burning blaster blots short of their target and bounces them back to sender with horrible imprecision. New blaster fire joins the fight from behind, and within moments there’s a solid presence at his back and an arm curling around his front to pull him away.

“Harry!” George yells into his ear. “Harry, you’ve got to—fuckin’  _ hell, _ come on!”

“No!” Harry screams hoarsely. “No, REMUS!”

One stray bolt lands dead-on the hangar door control with a sharp explosion. The blast doors begin irising quickly closed and both the guards and Vader leap clear—the stormtroopers forwards, towards the fight, and Vader back, into the safe corridor of the station. Harry’s last glance of that black shadow shows him nothing but an intimidating mask, an aura of death and power, and not one visible inch of skin. Nothing to tie into any remaining humanity at all. The red glow of a lightsaber and the last flash of a black cloak.

_ “Harry!” _ George growls. He’s dragged him almost to the ramp of the ship, and now that the bay doors have closed and triggered a sense of irrational claustrophobia, Harry is feeling the panic begin to set in.

_ “Harry…” _ says another voice, calmer and familiar and impossible.  _ “Harry. Go.” _

Harry turns in George’s arms and catches just a glimpse of the deadly set to his mouth, the hard glint in his eye, as he aims his blaster precisely over Harry’s head. They stumble together up the ramp and George slams down on the ramp controls.

“We’d better hope that beam’s down, or this is going to be a very short trip!”

Harry barely hears the words as he staggers after him in a daze. He collapses into the booth around the dejarik table as the engines rumble and lift the ship from the bay. He’s barely even aware of Artoo and Threepio opposite him, observing with barely-concealed concern. All he can see as he stares at the table chequerboard is a haunting flash of red and an empty cloak. Something soft settles over his shoulders and he jerks up, swiping at the bleariness behind his glasses. Princess Hermione smiles sadly down at him and perches on the seat. She rubs small circles over the blanket on his shoulder with one hand and takes his own clasped fists with the other, prying his fingers apart where they’re threatening to break through skin.

“I can’t…” Harry croaks. “He…”

“There was nothing you could do,” Hermione murmurs. “Lupin knew what he was doing. I’m sure he wouldn’t have left you if he thought you still needed him.”

“But I  _ do,” _ Harry insists thinly. “How can I do anything? I don’t know anything about the Force!”

“Then we’ll learn. I’m sure there are archives that still have the information we need.”

Harry picks his head up to give her a watery, curious look. “We?”

“I like to learn,” she replies with a small smile. “I’ll admit, you have me curious.”

Harry manages a weak and wet laugh and a small sniff but soon goes back to staring at the table surface. A clattering in the cockpit up ahead catches their attention and George comes hopping around the corner, very nearly falling flat on his face before he regains his balance.

“I hate to, uh, interrupt,” he says, looking genuinely guilty, “but we’re not quite out of the woods yet.”

“What do you need?” Hermione asks, standing at once.

“Someone manning the other canon so we can take down these fighters… You up for it, Potter?”

“I’ll do it,” Harry says. He scrambles to his feet and lets the blanket fall back into the booth. He can’t even remember how many years he’s spent dreaming of his very own space battles against the Empire. 

“And you’re taking the other, I presume?” Hermione frowns. “Who’s piloting the ship?”

“What?” George asks distractedly, already directing Harry towards a recessed ladder. “Chewie, of course. Now come on—”

“I’ll do it,” she interrupts. Both Harry and George freeze and turn to her. “Don’t you two give me that look! I’m  _ more _ than capable of firing those turrets! Excuse me for my lacking confidence in your co-pilot, but I think we’d all be safer if we had  _ two _ pairs of hands on the joysticks. Now come  _ on, _ we don’t have time for this!”

“Look, Princess,” George sighs. “This isn’t a game, all right?”

Hermione storms up to George with one long index pointed beneath his nose. “You shut your face, Solo, before I shut it for you!” she shouts. “I told you I am capable, now go and do your bloody  _ job!” _

Harry can see George’s jaw grinding from two steps behind. “Fine!” he shouts. “But if we die, it’s all on you!”

_ “Fine!” _ Hermione shouts back. She snatches up a handful of her robe and surprises them both by lifting it to her thigh and tying the long skirt just above her knees, out of the way of her feet and tight around her legs. “Get to it, then!”

Harry practically throws himself down the ladder when George scarpers back to the cockpit. He doesn’t dare look up to check on the Princess, instead clambering into the seat of the rotating turret and doing his best to curb his bubbling excitement. He studies the controls while he wrestles on the fighter’s headset—activator, firing grip, aiming grid, ammunition switch… Taking the turret grip in both hands he swings the seat left and right, adjusting to the sensitivity and perspective.

“Are you ready, Harry?” Hermione’s voice crackles over the headset.

“Never more,” he replies.

“Stay sharp, we’ve incoming portside,” George reports from the cockpit. “Strap in and prepare for some turbulence.”

The ship shudders and lists right on cue. Small green explosions splinter over the deflector shields outside Harry’s viewport. Quickly following is one sprinting Imperial TIE fighter; Harry chases it with covering fire but isn’t quick enough to trap it within the firing frame on screen. He can hear Hermione’s turret firing as he wrenches his to the side and hefts the huge gun upwards with effort. A second whizzes past and escapes by little more than a second. 

“They’re coming in too fast!” he says. A particularly large explosion rocks them wildly.

“Shit!” George cries. “Those were the laterals!”

_ “What?!” _ both Harry and Hermione reply.

“Don’t worry! She’ll hold, she’ll hold!”

Harry can’t hear George’s further muttering for the firing of his turret. He needs to anticipate, to get ahead, but each time he tries to set up they sweep out in front just one step ahead. Hermione lets out a shriek of glee that Harry can hear even outside of the headset and one blip disappears from the radar.

“Good shot!” he tells her, and then his opening appears right in front of him. One fighter banks hard just out of range. It possibly doesn’t realise he can see it, so with his turret hefted and his sight concentrated with all his might on the firing frame, Harry takes his shot.

Outside, the fighter collapses and bellows in an explosion of glittering black fragments.

“I got him!” he yells. “I got him!”

“Brilliant!” George replies. “Two down—don’t get cocky!”

The third blip winks out just as he says it. Harry focuses all of his attention on the remaining fighter. It becomes frantic, desperate with its shots and firing any time it faces their direction. It swoops beneath Harry’s tentative seat and he guns for it, missing by a sliver as the shots slip between its large, hexagonal sails.

“Come on, Potter, so close!” 

“I’m trying!”

More shots fire off from the top deck of the ship, clipping the fighter’s wing and sending it spiralling off course. Harry snatches up his grip and catches the fighter dead-on. Cheers erupt from the cockpit and both turrets.

“That’s all of them!” Hermione says. A loud rush of disturbance from George exhaling heavily into the headset has Harry wincing.

“Now where the hell did you learn to man a gun like that?”

“That was some good flying,” she says instead. Harry can hear the grin in her voice. He powers down the guns and slips everything back into place before clambering out of his seat and back up the ladder.

“Well, you know,” George is saying, “sometimes I still find ways to impress myself.”

Hermione snorts gently. “That doesn’t sound too hard.”

“There’s no one else following?” Harry asks, coming up behind them. Hermione has appropriated Chewie’s vacated co-pilot chair and is staring George down with one raised eyebrow. He can see a dark slip of skin where her robe is still tied up at her thigh.

“They let us go,” she says. “There’s no one else out there. They must be tracking us.”

“Tracking?” George splutters. “How can they—how could—” he looks up at the wire-riddled ceiling and then at the blinking computer terminals on the back wall. “They attached something, didn’t they.”

Distantly, Chewie rumbles. Harry assumes he’s in agreement. George groans loudly and sinks down in his chair. “What’s the betting it’s somewhere inside where we can find and disable it?”

“Well, at least the data Artoo’s carrying is still intact,” Hermione sighs.

George hums again beneath his hands. “I’ve been wondering what the hell he’s got that’s so important.”

“The technical readouts of that station, actually,” she says. Harry turns to her in surprise. “Well, it’s not a certain solution—we still need to analyse it for the weakness we’ve been informed of, and then we’ll have to launch the actual operation to take it down… It’s not over yet. Not at all.”

George drops his hand away from his face and looks at her long and hard. “You know… I’m not actually here for your revolution, Princess. I’m just the pilot.”

“And a good one, too, or so it seems,” Hermione replies. “You don’t even know how much good you could be doing while you’re off out here doing your dodgy deals and smuggling jobs instead.”

“No, look—I didn’t ask to be dragged into this mess, and I don’t particularly want to get on the bad side of the Empire, all right?”

Hermione’s expression of determination does not waver. “Think about it,” she says, and stands from the chair. She smiles at Harry as she passes him on her way out of the cockpit. Now that the excitement of the chase is over, all of Harry’s grief has come rushing back in like it had been held behind an opened floodgate. He curls in on himself and shuffles over to take her vacated seat, curling his knees in and hooking his heels on the edge of the chair.

“Hey,” George greets quietly. “That was some really good shooting out there… How’re you holding up?”

“Fine,” Harry says. His fingers play at the flaking leather on the chair arm. “Nice flying.”

George snorts but smiles. “Just doing my job.” Amongst the whirring of machinery and the quiet hum of the ship’s engines, the cockpit lapses into a comfortable quiet. Harry’s head spins with thoughts, though he has no particular want to latch onto any individual one of them. He watches George’s nimble fingers fidget with dials and switches and monitors that do relatively little.

“So,” he eventually mumbles, for reasons unknown, “have you changed your mind again on the Princess? Or are you still begging for her hand in marriage?”

Expecting a groan, Harry jumps when George instead scoffs an amused laugh. “I don’t think I’ll be venturing anywhere near the ‘m’ word any time soon, and  _ especially _ not in terms of Her Bossiness. Still, that was some impressive work she did with that gun… Not quite the damsel in distress I’d pictured back on that station. Kind of hot, don’t you think?”

Harry hums noncommittally, frowning at his knees and picking at a dark oil smudge. He knows George is also trying to cheer him up or distract him, but he can’t help but feel unease at the topic of conversation he started  _ himself. _

“She’s got a lot of spirit,” George sighs. “And brains, I’ll guess. But what do you think, Potter? You think a princess and a guy like me…?”

“No,” Harry says immediately, sullen. He doesn’t really know why, but he decides to put it down to feeling highly uncharitable and unilaterally gloomy. Still, he doesn’t miss George hiding a beaming grin beneath his hand when Harry glances up in shy embarrassment. He curls up tighter in his seat and pushes his glasses back up his nose. The cockpit descends into amiable silence once again.

*** * ***

Yavin reminds Harry greatly of Tatooine. It may be several times its size, but it swirls and undulates with all of the oranges, reds and whites of the deserts Harry knows so intimately. It’s all gaseous atmosphere and terrible storms, though, (or so George tells him), with winds that rage at over two-hundred kilometres per hour. Even Harry is sensible enough to not want to go near any of that. It’s all rather redundant, however, when they sail right past the planet and instead towards one of its numerous satellites—the fourth one, the one the Princess had pointed them to.

“So what kind of reception are we expecting?” George asks her.

“I don’t know,” she replies shortly. “I’m a senator, it’s not like I’ve been able to run around fraternising with known rebel cells. That would have signed my death warrant long before now.”

“Sheesh,” George mutters. “I’m sorry I asked. Can you at least tell us the right codes to not be shot out of the sky?”

The descent to the rainforest-choked surface of Yavin IV is a tense one. The ship shudders through atmo as George descends as quickly as he can allow, following the flight path signalled to him through the Alliance channels. They hang low over the trees and Harry stares unapologetically. He has not relinquished the co-pilot’s seat back to its rightful owner, though Chewie doesn’t seem to mind at all. Instead, he chuckles away in the passenger seat over his shoulder as Harry gapes down at the sheer amount of  _ green. _ He is not the only one amused by his amazement, Harry can tell.

Everything is alive. More alive than he’s ever seen—ever  _ dreamed. _ The treetops grasp at the sky with quivering leaves, some bigger than the roof of his old home and some too miniscule to make out. Small creatures are displaced from the depths as they pass overtop, but the forward-fixed viewport does not allow him to see the avifauna take to the sky and scatter. Before them rises a colossal pyramidal spire of yellow sandstone. Around them are similar outcroppings of ruinous temple-like structures, each festooned with arboreal pioneers from the surrounding forests at their feet. The crumbling pyramid grows larger and larger as they approach until they are almost on top of it, at which point George steadies the  _ Falcon _ and preps for the vertical descent into their assigned hangar dock.

They descend with measure through the clearing in the trees, which— _ wow, real trees! _ Beneath them is a darker pit, lit by scraps of strip lighting and crane lamps and mechanic’s torches. They’re surrounded by dozens of other ships that Harry instantly itches to leap out and explore, to shove his arms elbow deep into the innards of, even as he sees the sheer number of people hurrying this way and that and clearing the area for their landing.

The touchdown is soft. A small jolt as the landing gear suspension absorbs much of the damage. George takes his time shutting down the  _ Falcon’s _ systems. Hermione is already chivvying the droids towards the landing ramp and lowering it. Harry climbs out of his chair and follows Chewie out of the cockpit, but still hangs back to wait for George before following down the ramp. For some reason, despite his excitement and curiosity, he’s reluctant to go out there alone.

“All right there, Harry?” George asks in mild surprise when he finds him leaning against the wall opposite the hatch.

“Yeah, all right,” Harry replies. He adjusts his poncho on his shoulders and tips a shaky smile up at him. “You?”

George laughs gently. “Well, we’ll have to see, won’t we? Come on, or the Princess will be whining about how slow we are. You know, I think we’ve found ourselves a real…”

Harry looks up at him in confusion when halfway down the ramp George freezes in place and practically chokes on his words. His eyes are wide and shocked, his mouth parted and twitching as if to talk and finding nothing to say. Harry lifts a hand to his arm and steps closer before looking down the ramp at what he’s been so wrong-footed by. In one glance he’s fairly certain he’s found it. 

There, at the forefront of the landing party is a small number of people with shocks of ginger hair a similar brightness to George’s. In their midst is a fairly short middle-aged woman who looks more motherly than Aunt Petunia had ever been, with frizzy hair and rounded features and a comparably gobsmacked expression. To her right is a  _ very _ tall man with long ginger hair dressed in leathers and a pretty girl with braids and the most well-worn flight suit Harry’s ever seen. To their left is a shorter, broader redhead with large burn scars all over his bare arms and another taller boy currently talking animatedly to the Princess and unaware of his (presumable) family’s collective shock. The tallest redhead reacts first, snatching a tech by the arm and saying something without looking away from Harry and George. The tech nods and sprints away, shouting to others as he goes.

“George?” Harry asks. He doesn’t know whether he’s supposed to slip away quietly or stay and hold the poor man upright, and in the end his hesitation makes the decision for him. The dazed air is shattered by a long, moaning howl from Chewie to George.

“Um,” George says finally, barely above a breath. “Am I dreaming?” Harry opens his mouth to reply and finds he can’t actually bring himself to speak. Instead, he pinches the arm beneath his hand. George jerks and shoots him a startled look before turning back round to his… To whom, exactly?

“George,” the woman says hoarsely, stepping forward. The younger tall redhead whips around mid-sentence to stare at his mother and then follow her gaze up the ramp, an expression of disbelief and pain smacking him across the face as he does.

“Mum?” George replies weakly. 

“George,” says the choked-up younger girl. Harry startles at the speed at which everyone’s eyes have suddenly begun to water.

_ “George,” _ the shorter brother echoes. “What the—”

“George Weasley,” their mother interrupts. Her jaw quivers and her voice is faint. “Where  _ have _ you  _ been?” _

“Mum,” George breathes. He takes the last few steps to the bottom of the ramp shakily, leaning on Harry when Harry tugs his arm around his shoulders. “Mum, I—”

The breath is quite abruptly knocked out of him when George’s mother collides full force into his chest and throws her arms around her son. 

“How  _ dare _ you disappear on us like that! How dare you—how dare you let us think—after Fred—”

“I’m sorry,” George whispers. Harry tries to extricate himself from the situation, he really does, but the grip George has on his shoulder is vice-like. “I’m so  _ sorry, _ I—”

“You’re back,” says the girl, now crying as she comes to throw her arms around her mum and older brother.  _ “George, _ you’re—you’re—”

“I’m here,” he croaks.

Harry looks desperately over to Princess Hermione, but she’s watching the scene with a look of wonder and sorrow. Her hand on the assumedly-younger brother’s arm relaxes and she pushes him forward. He stumbles, taking his other brothers by the shoulders and looking utterly winded.

“You have to be fucking  _ joking,” _ he finally manages. George’s mother doesn’t pull away, but his sister does for long enough to reach out and snatch up one of her brothers’ hands and pull them forward to join the hug. They all oblige easily, looking no less starstruck even after they finally lay their hands on their brother themselves.

Over their shoulders, Harry can see three people come running up to them. He blinks at first, quite convinced he’s seeing things. The first is an older man, middle-aged like George’s mother and gently balding. He has on a sensible, light tunic jacket for the rainforest’s humidity. Next is presumably another brother, a curly redhead with glasses and a listing headset. But after them… A seventh tall sibling approaches, wringing his hands on a blackened cloth and tucking it back into his mechanics’ belt. Harry stares at him and can’t resist the temptation to rub his eyes beneath his glasses, because… Because… 

He looks almost identical to George.

“How could you!” the girl is now exclaiming. She brings her fist down on George’s shoulder and sobs. George reaches up to run a hand over her head. Harry can’t see his face from here, but he can see how his throat works.

“What’s going on?” asks a new voice. The George clone. His—oh gods, his kriffing  _ twin brother. _

Everyone disentangles themselves from George slowly. His mother is the last and most reluctant of all, keeping her fingers wrapped in his vest even after he lifts his head from her hair.

“No,” says the one with glasses. “No, you’re—you’re  _ joking.” _

“George,” says the older man.

But George doesn’t seem to hear them. No, he’s staring at his clone, his  _ twin, _ and taking one tentative step forward. His fingers unwind from Harry’s shoulder and Harry steps back, watching him reach out for the other guy in silence. 

“Fred,” he whispers. His eyebrows twitch upwards in a strange manner. “Is that…?”

“George,” says the staggered twin called Fred. “George, you’re not—this isn’t a trick, right? Because it’s not fucking  _ funny _ if—”

George practically leaps on his brother. They both stumble back with the force of it, Fred’s hands rising to clutch at the back of his jacket. It’s funny, really, how similar they look even when one has his hair as long as his older brother’s and tied back out of his face.

“I thought you were dead!” Harry hears George exclaim. 

“And we all thought  _ you _ were dead!” Fred snaps back. They cling to each other for dear life. “They told me you disappeared! You never fucking  _ came back!” _

“I was looking for  _ you!” _ George cries. “I was… Everywhere… There was nothing.”

“That’s because they handed me back over, you bloody idiot! You stupid, stupid, selfish bloody idiot!”

“I know,” George replies, broken. “I know I am, I’m…”

“Come on,” says a warm, quiet voice by Harry’s ear. Harry almost jumps back into the Princess before she reaches out to steady him. “Let’s leave them to it. We can go and check on Artoo.”

“Yeah,” Harry agrees faintly. “Yeah, let’s…”

The Weasleys seem to have piled back onto their missing brother. Harry looks to Chewie, who is making the Wookie equivalent of a warm, happy smile and who nods to Harry and Hermione to let them know he’ll stay. Harry smiles back and spares one more look at George before hopping onto a transport behind the Princess.

“We’ll check on them later,” Hermione tells him.

“You know them,” Harry observes.

“One of them,” she corrects. “He’s a friend. We met on Alderaan years ago, but I only heard stories about his family, I didn’t know…”

“Yeah,” Harry says as the small hangar transport begins the journey into the heart of the base. “I didn’t know at all.”

“Well, you’ve only known him… What? A day?”

“No idea,” Harry confesses. “Maybe two.”

“Two days,” she says quietly. “You have time, now, I’m sure he’ll tell you—he seems like he likes you well enough.”

“Maybe—if we’re even alive tomorrow,” Harry points out.

Hermione acquiesces, sombre. “If we’re alive.”

*** * ***

The meeting room is bright with harsh lights bearing down on the gathered congregation. The Princess has introduced him to some of the rebellion’s pilots and so they are whom he sits with now, talking as genially as he can manage beyond his nerves. Commander Wood sits on his right with an X-wing schematic in hand, helping Harry study the ship he’ll ‘surely be assigned’ between short fits of excited chatter between his pilots. One of them, a pale and overtly friendly human girl named Katie Bell, laughs and throws her arm over his shoulder, tugging him into a side-hug he isn’t expecting.

“You’re all right, Potter,” says Terence Higgs, a dark-skinned Veela, when Harry tells them about his trips down Sail Ridge back on Tatooine.

“Lay off, Wood,” Alicia Spinnet snorts and bats at her commander’s arm. 

Cedric Diggory nudges her and gestures to the techies flitting around the edges of the auditorium. “They’ll be starting in a minute.”

At the exact moment Roger Davies pinches Diggory’s ridged arm and they almost send Harry toppling off his seat on the narrow bench, he catches sight of George finally being shepherded into the room amidst his long-lost family. His mother is leading the charge, striding purposefully towards a small knot of bemedalled officers and dignitaries. His sister seems to have his arm in a deathgrip in a similar manner in which his twin brother hovers immovably by his shoulder, and still all of them are teary-eyed and shellshocked. George, in the centre of it all, looks more anxious and skittish than Harry thinks he’d ever let on under normal circumstances. Chewie traipses in after the large group and settles on the bench above theirs to accommodate for his height.

A tired, greying human in khaki uniform takes up position at the front of the room. The room lapses quickly into a respectful silence as all attention turns to him. He takes one solemn breath and addresses the assembled crowd.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he begins. “You all know why we are here. Among us are the brave Senators and Generals who have sincerely provided their support for our movement, whether it be open or covert. As of now, time is of the essence; the Imperial battle station you have all heard of is fast approaching us from the far side of Yavin and its sun. Its positioning and subsequent need to compensate for the system’s gravitational influence will give us a little extra time, but if we do not stop it before it clears the planet’s eclipse, our Alliance will be eradicated once and for all.” A smattering of murmuring and small gasps whisper through the room. The lights dim suddenly and a projection rises in the central holo podium, displaying the flickering white outline of the station whose very image brings a tinge of dread to Harry’s thoughts.

“The station,” the General continues, “is heavily shielded and mounts more collective firepower than half of the Imperial fleet. However, its defences were designed to better against large scale, capital ship assaults—a small one or two-man fighter should easily be able to slip through its defensive screens.”

On Commander Wood’s left, a broad, black haired man in a scorched and battered flight suit raises his arm.

“What is it, Green Leader Flint?” asks the General.

“’Scuse me for asking, sir,” says Commander Flint in rough tones, “but what are our snub fighters gonna do against  _ that?” _

“Seeing as the Empire does not consider one small ship a danger to anything bar another, like a TIE fighter, they have not taken adequate measures to keep any away and instead are relying on their mounted assault weaponry. Furthermore, analysing the data we have been presented by Senator Granger has revealed what was reported to us by our source—a weakness in the station’s defensive design.

“A small thermal exhaust port indicated here—” at which the General swipes the holo to turn a small blinking beacon of light towards the auditorium, “—is, due to its expulsive nature, left without particle shields. There is a weakness much farther down this shaft, in the depths of the station, which may be exploited through the external access. A direct hit from any fighter will cause a chain reaction that will destroy the station from the inside.”

Artoo whistles quietly as the station plans enhance to lead the audience along the path seemingly prepared by the Alliance tacticians.

“The approach will not be easy,” the General resumes. “Fighters must make their way along this shaft here, level off in the trench, and then skim the surface to this point, here. The target is two metres wide and must take a direct hit at exactly ninety degrees—any less than a direct hit will not be enough to trigger the reaction.

“Now, for the bad news,” the General says solemnly. Several pilots shift and mumble—as if it hadn’t already been bad enough! “While I said the port is not particle-shielded, it does have active ray shields. This means that photon torpedoes must be fired in place of energy weapons.”

Louder than previous whisperings, renewed disbelieving chatter breaks over the meeting room.

“A  _ two metre _ target at  _ maximum speed?” _ scoffs the blueish Nikto from Yellow Squadron that Bell had introduced as simply Frees. “And we have to do this with photon torpedoes? Even the computers won’t be able to handle that.”

“But it’s not that hard,” Harry murmurs, frowning. Wood’s pointed ears twitch in interest and he gives Harry a sideways look. “No, really. I used to bullseye womp-rats in my T-16 back… well, back home. They’re barely two metres wide.”

“But how many other of these rats were there, armed and highly dangerous and firing at you?” Wood asks him. Harry sighs and shrugs lightly. It’s a good point.

“Take note of these emplacements here,” says the General, running a few outstretched fingers over the projection and leaving behind a trail of glimmering points of light. “There is a heavy concentration of firepower along the latitudinal axes surrounding this trench, and the field generators here, here and here, to name a few, will likely cause a lot of distortion. It has been estimated that maneuverability will be reduced to about point-three.”

Another round of murmurings sparks around Harry. The General holds up a hand for quiet and addresses the Commanders directly. “Green Squadron will cover for Blue on the first pass. Yellow shall cover Red on the second. You are to ensure a direct hit on the target—ninety degrees. Are there any questions?”

A reddish hand raises quickly over Harry’s left shoulder. “What if both runs fail, sir?” a girl called Macavoy asks. “What action do we take?”

The General grimaces and meets her eyes levelly. “There shan’t be anything after that,” he says. “Are there any more questions?” Heavy silence descends upon the room and he sighs. “Then get to your ships, prepare for takeoff, and may the Force be with you.”

The projection snaps off and the main lights raise again, and the General steps back out of the spotlight. Around Harry the Alliance pilots are exchanging solemn looks and noises. Wood rises to his full elven height and smiles tightly down at Harry. 

“Let’s get you kitted up, then,” he says. Harry nods and lets himself be ushered this way and that through the halls of the base, wondering despite himself just how exactly they’re going to be able to pull this one off.

*** * ***

Freshly decked all in orange and splattered proudly with the blood red insignia of the rebellion, Harry walks with See-Threepio into the entryway of the Red Squadron’s fighter hangar. Before him is a dim space, bright enough with each bay’s striplighting and the techs’ floodlights, but with walls scored with old blaster scarring and engine misfires and fuel spills. On his right he can see Artoo buzzing around the landing gear of Red Five, making interested noises at the amused technicians trying to do their last minute checks. The four fighters before his own are being attended to by the rest of the squadron, Commander Wood, Bell, Spinnet and Ginevra Weasley, George’s spitfire of a little sister to whom Harry’s yet to say more than three words. She catches sight of him in the hangar door and grins widely, throwing an enthusiastic wave his way before slipping nimbly into her cockpit.

And speaking of George, Harry’s assessing sweep of the room reveals the man to be skulking away in the shadows as far from his sister as he can manage. Harry marches up to him immediately, thinking of sharing some final well wishes before heading out to battle, but stops short when he takes notice of the crates he’s hauling.

“You’re  _ leaving?” _ he asks abruptly. George sets down his load and darts a nervous glance in the direction of Red Three. Harry surveys the supply crates with disbelief and gestures with a floundering arm. “You’re just—you’re just going to  _ leave?” _

“You didn’t really expect me to stick around, did you Harry?” George asks snidely in return. His eyes catch the light of someone’s torch and Harry is taken quite back by the hardness behind his gaze. “I have debts to pay off, back on my rounds. You’re a smart boy, I’m sure you figured that one out.”

“Well, yes, but I—”

“And anyway, do you think I’m enough of an idiot to hang around here, the  _ primary target?” _ he hisses. “No sir. I think I’ll be on my way.”

“And what about your family?” Harry snaps. George flinches, slightly. Harry steps forward and jabs a finger into his chest. “Don’t think I didn’t hear some of what they were saying. You went missing, I know you did. You went missing and now you’re just going to disappear back off and abandon them here.”

“I’m not—”

“Yes, you are! I thought you were happy to be back! They certainly are! What do you think your little sister—your  _ baby _ sister’s gonna say when she gets back,  _ maybe, _ and you’ve kriffin’ gone and disappeared again! Huh? You’re not even gonna stick around to make sure she makes it back okay? To make sure the rest of your brothers,  _ your mum and dad _ don’t die with the rest of us?”

“Look, Potter, there are some things you just don’t understand,” George growls. He leans forward into Harry’s space and knocks his hand away carelessly. “I ran away when I was thirteen, all right? And I ended up fuck knows where, no clue where my brother was, just trying to make a living so maybe one day I’d find him and bring him home. I’ve  _ done _ things, all right? I’ve done things they don’t know about—that they  _ can’t _ know about—and  _ I _ can’t stick around here and let that weigh on me while they go around acting like I’m the same brother they lost all those years ago!” Harry staggers back slightly with the push George presses to his shoulder.

“Now, either you let me go quietly or you come with, and save your pretty neck while you’re at it.”

“No!” Harry nearly shouts. “How about  _ you _ take a good  _ kriffing _ look around you! You know what they’re up against here! This is your  _ family, _ George. They need your help and you’re just turning your back!”

“Attacking that battle station is not my idea of courage,” George says lowly. Dangerously lowly. “We were already captured once. We went down to the detention levels. We saved the Princess. What the hell more d’you want from me?”

“An honest act of goodwill,” Harry answers immediately. “Proof you actually care. Maybe some effort to help us take down the Empire once and for all.”

“Going near that thing is only going to get you killed,” George insists. “It’s suicide. You either skip with Chewie and I or you go out to your death, but it’s your choice, not mine.”

Harry watches him for a moment longer. Sees the shadows of pain and ferocity in his eyes. The ridges of white scars across his face, neck, collar, arms… The quivering of the fingers held to Harry’s shoulder.

“I hope it’s worth everything you leave behind,” he says quietly. He pushes George’s hand back towards him and steps away. “Take care of yourself. But then again, I suppose that’s what you do best.”

Harry turns on his heel and begins to stride off to his fighter. He fights down the bile and the strain of tears burning high in his throat. His crash helmet digs sharply into his ribs where he’s been clutching it tighter and tighter under his arm. He’s stopped only seconds later by the strained call from over his shoulder.

“No… Harry…” George quavers. “Come on.”

Harry turns again to level him with a look he hopes conveys all of his anger and disappointment, but maybe without the fear. He chews on the inside of his lip as he watches George struggle for words.

“May the Force be with you,” the smuggler finally settles on. Harry feels his eyebrows leap in dry amusement as he scoffs and looks unseeingly away. He mulls over his anxieties and the tangled duracord mess squirming in the pit of his stomach before meeting George’s eyes again.

“May the Force be with you,” he replies curtly. And then he walks off, leaving George back in the dark corner of the hangar.

“Harry!”

Harry doesn’t even have time to be mourning his lost friend before another comes bounding up and straight into his arms.

“Harry! Bloody hell, I can’t believe you’re here!” Neville Longbottom, looking perky in the neat greys of his command room uniform, wraps his ridiculously long arms right around Harry and almost lifts him off the ground. The air is forced from Harry’s lungs in a surprised and overjoyed laugh as he wrestles free enough to cling back, patting down his old friend with half a paranoid mind questioning whether or not really is there.

“Neville!” Harry chokes. “Neville—what the hell? You made it!”

“I made it!” he replies jubilantly. “And so did you!” They both draw back but grapple each other’s shoulders still drinking in the sight before them after such an ominous and uncertain last farewell.

“I’m glad you’re here, Nev,” Harry says. The smile is quickly sliding off his face—unsurprising with the fate of the galaxy currently in the lurch and one friend likely lost forever—but it remains sincere as they appraise each other.

“You’re really going out there?” Neville asks quietly.

“Yeah, Nev, I’ve got to. Hey—Wood said there’s a spare fighter on Green Squadron if you’re up for joining us.”

Neville smiles and pats him once more on the shoulder before letting go. “Sorry, Potter, not this time. They trained me up for tactics and ground assault in the Academy, and the Generals here say they want to put that to use. That was Ron and I and a couple of others in Command setting up your trajectories for the run—and bloody hell, we know it’s tight, but there’s really no better way to do this.”

“Don’t worry,” Harry laughs gently, “it’ll be just like old times… But who’s Ron?”

“Oh, right,” Neville flushes. “Yeah, Ron—Ron Weasley. Head of Strategy and Resource Management. He’s brilliant, really. The tall one with the red hair. The short red hair, not the other two.”

“The one that’s friends with the Princess?”

“Yeah, that one! Hold on, how’d you know the Princess?”

Harry snorts. “It’s a bloody long story, Nev, and I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.”

“Well we’ll hear all your stories when you get back, yeah? I’ve got to run, but I’ll be here when you get back!”

Harry claps Neville on the back and waves him off. “Don’t do anything stupid!” he yells after him.

“I should be telling you that!” Neville yells back as he jogs towards the door.

“Harry!” 

“Princess!” Harry says breathlessly. He turns in surprise to see Princess Hermione, now flanked by another General and two helmeted guards. She smiles and waves her hand vaguely.

“Please, call me Hermione. But something’s wrong, I can feel it. What’s happened?”

Harry sighs and risks a brief glance back into that shadowy corner, readjusting his grip on his helmet. “It’s just… George…”

“There’s nothing you can do,” Hermione says quietly. “If that’s what he wants, then…”

“I know,” Harry says. “I know, it’s just… I wish Remus were here.”

Hermione takes both of his hands in hers and smiles sadly down at them. “I’m sure he’d be very proud of you, Harry. He’ll be with you, even if not in person.”

“Thank you,” Harry tells her earnestly. Her smile warms.

“Go on then, to your ship. Know we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed for you here.”

“As will I, I’m sure.”

She laughs quietly and lifts his fingers to her lips for the most fleeting of touches. “Good luck, Potter.”

“May the Force be with you,” he replies. Hermione walks on with her company, and once again Harry turns towards his X-wing fighter. He admires its sharp cut and streamlined build as he circles towards the ladder at the cockpit, pausing briefly to laugh at Threepio where he’s pointing up at Artoo as he’s hefted onto the ship.

“You’d better hold on tight!” the droid insists. “You have to come back, do you hear me? If you don’t come back, then who am I going to shout at?”

“This little Artoo unit of yours is pretty beat-up,” says one of the techs over Artoo’s cheerful reply. “You sure you don’t want a new one?”

Harry snorts and clambers up the ladder to level with them. “No thanks—he’s saved my life probably several times over by now. We’ve been through a lot together already.” The second tech laughs and guides Artoo’s feet into their correct holdings. “You okay there, Artoo?”

Artoo whistles happily, and if he weren’t suctioned to the crane lifting him in, Harry is sure he’d be jumping with excitement. Harry situates himself in the seat of his cockpit at the same time as Wood signals to his ground crew at the other end of the hangar and the high whine of his engines starting joins the pounding thunder of those of Red Two, Three and Four. Harry studies his controls as he hits his own ignition, silently cheering with glee when he finds their simple, intuitive design closer to what one might expect of his old skyhopper. 

His helmet goes on and his visor is snapped into place, and then with the flick of a switch the hatch over his head lowers itself to its airtight seal. The ladder is wheeled away from the side of his ship and the last of his ground crew signals the okay, and suddenly Harry is free to close lift off from the hangar bay for the very first time, turning slowly, slowly, slowly to situate himself as the last in the line of his squadron preparing for liftoff and flying out to meet the stars.


	6. VI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And for my final trick

“This is Red Leader, standing by,” crackles Commander Oliver Wood’s distinctive optimism over the open com.

“Yellow Leader, standing by,” confirms Skye Parkin, similarly.

“Blue Leader, standing by,” copies Roger Davies.

“Green Leader, standing by,” grunts Marcus Flint.

“Red Squadron, you are cleared for takeoff,” says a sharp, clear voice from Command. Immediately Harry can see Wood steering his fighter forwards and out of the hangar, into the open blue sky of Yavin IV. He’s followed closely by Spinnet in Red Two, Weasley in Red Three, Bell in Red Four, and then Harry himself bringing up the rear in Red Five. Harry maneuvers gently through the wide, narrow opening of the hangar bay and over the forested canopy of green, seeing before them two other squadrons falling into formation up ahead. They rise steadily through the atmosphere and Harry triple-checks his connection to Artoo while he recalls his landing gear.

_ “Harry,” _ says somebody weakly, with an audibly echoey quality not from the com in his ear. Harry startles and looks around the tiny space of his cockpit, shocked at the interruption and with his heart in his throat at the sound of what is definitely Remus’ voice.  _ “Remember,” _ the voice continues,  _ “the Force will be with you.” _

Yavin looms over them a huge, swirling mass like a red supergiant threatening its systems in the throes of its death. The likeness strikes something a little too close to heart, when behind its great berth is the fast-approaching siren of death that they’re on assignment to destroy by whatever means possible. It creeps like a shadow none of them can see but know is there, choking them all with fear and determination alike. Engines roar over the lower atmosphere of the moon, near-twenty attack fighters shuddering under the force of pressure where they’re ushered faster and faster through the thick, humid air. The shuddering damps as the atmosphere thins around them, eventually spitting them out into the vast vacuum of nothing that batters the seals joining each panel of durasteel and transparisteel. 

Anticipation ramps rapidly on the Yavin approach. The knowledge that their target is hidden, veiled by the curvature of the planet has everyone as on edge as if the station might jump out without warning. As if it could override the effects of gravity at any time and take them by surprise. 

Rounding the girth of the planet does little to alleviate the disquiet that settles among the pilots. The gleaming outline of the battle station grows in their viewports, a commanding, ominous sliver of silver around a black void that not even the reflected light from the planet will illuminate.

“All right, Reds,” Wood’s voice says in Harry’s ear. “Final approach time. Form’s good, keep it up. The Yellows will be right behind us. Stand by to switch to attack formation.”

“Yes, sir,” replies Spinnet. “Red Two, standing by.”

“Red Three, standing by,” says Weasley.

“Red Four, standing by,” says Bell.

“Red Five,” Harry follows, “standing by.”

A whistle from Artoo rings through the metallic hull and into Harry’s cockpit.  _ SYSTEM OK, _ reads the transcription on the screen in front of him. A red glow flares around the edge of the station as it comes into better view.

“Execute!” Wood orders with a bark. Harry flicks his switches to ready his fighter and grins when the long S-foils either side of him split and rise. Now with the full power and maneuverability of his fighter at his fingertips Harry can practically  _ feel _ the energy flowing through the engines and weapon systems, controls and stabilisers. He thinks he can even feel the sparking exhilaration in the circuits of Artoo as he once again has taken to space after lamenting far too long without.

The station grows to overtake his viewport and his whole fighter shivers, buffeted this way and that by an invisible force. The automatic life support of the cabin kicks in to compensate for the accelerating rate of Harry’s breathing.

“Outer shields approaching,” Wood reports. “Lock down freeze-floating controls and switch deflectors on, double-front.” Harry does as he’s told and exhales shakily when the shuddering reduces to little more than a couple of jitters, once again hanging unsupported in force-null darkness. 

“Outer shields cleared,” Wood says. He waits for Yellow, Blue and Green to copy and repeat before continuing. “All channels radio silence until we’re on top of them. They don’t look to be expecting much resistance, so let’s use that to our advantage and give ’em hell.”

“Copy that, Red Leader.” Yellow.

“Copy, Red Leader.” Blue.

“Copy, Red Leader,” from Green. “Over and out.”

The open com in Harry’s ear snaps abruptly, cut. He’s left in disorienting quiet, with only the thrumming vibrations of his engines to soothe him on his second journey towards the emerging dark shadow of death. A low drumming of tension situates itself a permanent fixture in Harry’s skull, just behind his ears. They’re not close enough to see individual lights on the station surface. The static of a newly-opened com shatters his nauseating trance.

“Accelerate to attack velocity,” Wood orders.

“Red Leader, this is Green Leader. Blue are in position; commencing first attack run now.”

“Copy, Green Leader. We’ll try to draw their fire. Red Squadron, follow me.”

Ahead, Red One banks sharply to the left. The axis of his split foils tilts nearly perpendicular to the station’s surface, closely followed by Two, Three, Four and Harry as they dive towards the commencing barrage of artillery. Heavy green bolts streak past Harry’s vision, scoring the space around him and threatening to make his vision dance with visions of the rainforests back on the fourth moon. He and Red Three veer one way while the rest go the other, parting as one clean break around the nearest outstanding turret. 

“Heavy fire, Red!” calls Bell. “Twenty three degrees.”

“Can’t miss it, Four,” Wood replies. “Stay low, keep to the surface.”

Harry catches sight of a disruptive electrical canon chasing the tail of a harassed Yellow Y-wing. “This is Red Five,” he says as he pushes himself into a tight dive. “I’m going in.”

“On your six, Five,” replies Weasley. She sweeps back around and drops out of view behind him, the sharp red flickers of her laser cannons framing her flank. Harry pulls up to skim the ridged and perilous surface of the station until he’s less than a thousand feet from the implant, releasing a concentrated burst from all four cannons to focus his zero point on the short trail before the Imp weaponry. The implant crumples under his fire and explodes outwards in a geyser of debris and flaming components, forcing Harry to wrench his fighter up and out of the blast. The controls in his hands protest his commands, lacking the centrifugal forces from the auto-pressers to lift him out of dodge. He braces himself as he rides through the top of the superheated and expanding mushroom of gases, but other than a brief frying wave and a buffeting from below, he zips out on the other side perfectly intact. The cursor flies across Artoo’s com screen but Harry can barely risk a glance down at it as he is.

“All right, Five?” asks Spinnet.

“All right, Two,” he replies shakily. “Just a little hot under the collar.” The replying snort of laughter could be from any one of them.

“Watch yourself, Five,” says Wood. “Give yourself more lead time or you’ll find yourself going up with the guns.”

“Yessir,” Harry replies, and the admonishment sinks heated embarrassment leant by the explosion into the pit of his stomach and the flats of his cheeks.  _ TOO CLOSE BUT SHIP OK, _ says the screen when he pulls far enough out of danger to check. “Sorry Artoo,” he murmurs. Silently he resolves to keep his wits better about him.

“There’s a lotta fire from the far side of that deflection tower!” the voice of Yellow Leader Parkin cuts in, not dissimilar to Wood’s. “Who’s spare?”

“I’m going in!” Bell calls. “Cover me, Heidi!”

“Right behind you,” Macavoy replies.

Bell lurches into a twisting, spinning dive from somewhere several metrics above Harry, who spirals out of her way amidst a small incoming of bright green spearshafts. A gleaming Y-wing drops into line just above Red Four, who’s busy laying down a salvo of crimson fire to split the station’s antennae, rifles and surface units alike. Sharp shards of detritus plume up between Macavoy and the back of Bell’s foils, glittering and shimmering like a rain of deadly silver.

“Heidi!” snaps Frees tersely. “Heidi, pull up!”

“No, I’m good!” Macavoy insists. In front of Harry, the deflection tower Bell’s targeting splinters into a shock of far-reaching electrical arcs. “I’m good!” One lucky bolt from a forgotten mounted turbo laser catches Macavoy’s left engine and blows her entire fighter out of space.

“Fuck!” Parkin shouts. Harry can practically hear Wood’s disapproval of her outburst in his heavy silence. 

“Kark,” Diggory mutters. “Kark,  _ Heidi.” _

“Heads in the game!” Weasley reminds them all. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were about to—”

“Attention squad leaders! Attention squad leaders!” breaks over the line from Command Base. “Picking up a new set of signals over the other side of the station—enemy fighters on course to intercept!”

“Yeah,” Wealsey says. “That.”

Harry darts his gaze immediately to the outside of his viewport, scanning as minutely as he can for any hint of a TIE foil or command pod. His gaze flickers down to the scanner nestled between his multitude of readout panels.

“My scope’s negative, nothing on visual,” he reports.

“Maintain visual scanning,” Wood says. “With all the energy bouncing around outside they’ll be on top of us before it’ll pick up, but they can’t take away your eyes.”

“They can try,” Spinnet grouses.

“Bell!” Harry shouts suddenly. “Four, you’ve got one on your tail!”

“What? Where?!” she cries. “I can’t see ’im!”

Harry watches in dismay as Red Four rolls over and over and veers sharply upwards, Imperial TIE nipping after her like a particularly nasty dunefly. She tips up overtop herself and accelerates into the bottom of her loop back towards the surface.

“I can’t shake it!” she growls. “I can’t—”

Red Two shoots up like a dart from the sea of grey below, spinning as she fires upon the Imperial too absorbed in its pursuit of Four to notice in time. The attack lands a direct hit on the fighter’s exposed stabiliser, knocking it off into a sickening downward spiral of flame until it smashes into the surface and goes skittering in a mess of dashed transparisteel and solar arrays.

“Nice shot,” Weasley says. Beside her Frees in Yellow Four takes out a second fighter. “Damn, they’re creeping up on us!”

“Red Five, Red Five! Move in!” Wood cries. “Red Five, where the hell are you going?”

But Harry’s single-track mind has already found its next target. Ahead of him protrudes a recognisable and somewhat important peripheral, unprotected and his for the taking. “I think I’ve found one of their lateral stabilisers,” he tells the rest of the crew. “I’m going for it.”

“Watch your back, Five! You’re under heavy fire!”

Spinnet is right, of course, yet in the nimble trick of his X-wing it’s almost too easy to spin and dodge the concentrated barrages of flickering green bolts headed his way. Harry opens up on the stabiliser bank mid-roll, frowning in concentration as he levels his fighter back out and dives over it. The steel grey crevices spit with heat and slivers of shorn, vaporised metal, and the stabilisers rupture in a contained flash of fire and with an expulsion of ruined inner components.

“Got it,” he says distractedly. “Heading south to the next one.”

“Watch your back, Potter!” Weasley snaps. “Karking hells, more fighters incoming!”

“He’s on me,” Harry replies, nosing once more into a dive and craning to see over his shoulder. “He’s on me, I won’t shake him in time.”

“I’m on him.”

Red Three darts over his head as he tears himself out of his maneuver. His minimal fire catches the edge of the next array and melts half through it, but he’s narrowly missed by the next malicious attack from behind. Weasley opens up on the TIEs as soon as she’s cleared him, and the reflections of the following eruptions glint red and gold in the transparisteel of Harry’s cockpit.

“Going in!” Bell says. 

“With you, Four,” Spinnet replies. Together they spiral down to level out just metres above the surface. Bell opens full fire on one overlooked tower that destroys spectacularly, leaping further destruction below the surface and thick branches of electrical arcs above for almost as far as any of them can see. One arc catches the edges of Two’s port-side S-foils and knocks her off course, spinning away towards the site of the first reactor run.

“Alicia!”

“Red Two, Red Two, are you all right?”

“I’m all right, One,” Spinnet says, but her tone is strained. “Just a little jumpy. My altitude’s not right but I can judge it well enough myself.”

“Eject, Alicia, eject!” Bell cries.

“No, I’m good,” she insists. A nearby tower takes her on as its next target and forces her into a tight, precise evasion. “I’m all right.”

A stark crackle announces the rejoining of another squad over the com. “Red Leader, Yellow Leader—this is Green Leader. We’ve lost Davies, Chang, Rath and Warrington in the first run—”

_ “No,” _ whispers the muffled voice of Diggory, seemingly before he can help himself.

“—We’re seriously down on our fire power here. First attempt failed. Handing over to you Reds, but be warned: there are three spec-fighters in pursuit down there, precise shooters. It’s like sitting in a bucket and waiting to be picked off.”

“Sorry to hear it, Green Leader,” Wood replies grimly.

“In position, Red Leader,” Parkin soon reports. She sounds no less solemn than the rest of them feel, even if she continues her assignment without second thought.

“Copy, Yellow Leader. Red Two, Red Three, with me. Four and Five, take up defensive with the Blues.”

“Copy that, Red Leader,” Bell says.

“Copy, Red Leader,” Harry echoes.

“May the Force be with you,” says the softly accented voice of Blue Five’s Twi’lek pilot.

“Right back at you,” Wood says. “Come on, let’s get this done."

Harry and Katie Bell peel off from their formation to join the fighters running distraction around the trench. All they know of the battle belowground is what they hear through their coms, and none of it assuages any particular anxieties.

“I don’t like this,” Wood says after a long stint of silence from the strike team. “It’s not right.”

“We should be able to pick up the target by now,” says Spinnet, sounding apprehensive.

“The disruption down here is ridiculous… Are we sure we’re in the right trench?”

“Affirmative, si—shit!” Weasley yelps. “This is sudden!”

“That tower up there’s going to be a problem. Standby to close up when I give the signal.”

“…Or it’s going to let us through?”

“What in the seven skies is going on down there?” Harry mutters as he dodges the sail of a persistent TIE following a green tagged X-wing and loops around to destroy it.

“Eyes open for those fighters,” Wood says.

“All short and long-range scopes are blank,” Weasley reports. “Too much interference. Red Five, any sign?”

Harry jerks the nose of his fighter up and peers around with urgency. “No sign here—no, wait! Coming in at point three five.” Three glinting black bugs skim the surface of the trench rim and disappear below it.

“Got them, thanks Potter.”

“Ah ha!” Wood announces. “I’ve got it on screen! I’m almost in range, just hold them off a few more seconds…”

Harry manages to turn back in the direction of the trench to see one of their X-wings rise nose-first above the surface and slow rapidly before accelerating back down.

“I’ve got ’em up front,” Weasley says. “I can drive them out! No, wait—Alicia! Alicia on your left—!”

“Damn,” Spinnet grunts. “Damn,  _ damn—fuck it.” _

“Alicia,” Bell calls out anxiously. Harry has to roll to avoid another onslaught of tower fire as they wander away from the trench. Something catches the side of his hull, blessedly far behind his engines by the readouts of his wailing instruments, and he signals for Artoo to unlock himself and roll out to assess the damage.

_ “Alicia!” _ Weasley yells.

“Katie,” Alicia says. “Katie, I’m sorry. I—”

A deafening, shattering crackle tears across Harry’s eardrums. Katie cries out in agony and banks sharply around the next tower in a maneuver Harry would definitely not have recommended. Wood snaps out something harsh and certainly not Basic. 

“Torpedoes away,” he says next. Two of the three black TIEs appear over the rim of the trench moments before Red One does, followed closely by the third Imperial and Red Three. 

“Did you get it?” Weasley asks hurriedly. “Did it go in?”

“No,” Wood sighs. “They got the rim, didn’t go through.”

“Damnit!”

“Red Five, this is Red Leader. Move into position and begin your run. Red Three, Red Four, cover him. I’ll try and hold them off up here with Flint.”

“Copy, Red Leader.”

“Copy, sir.”

“In position now.”

Harry takes a large swooping turn around a vicious dogfight between Blue Three and an Imp. Ahead of him Bell is circling the lead-in to the trench restlessly, shooting at anything black and shiny. 

“Right behind you, Five.”

“Copy, Three,” he says. “Ready to take this thing down?”

“The sooner the better,” Bell snaps.   
“All right. We’re going in at full speed from the get-go, okay? Hopefully it’ll give us enough time and keep those fighters away.”

“Make sure you get it this time, you hear me?” Wood tells them. 

“Copy that. Run commencing.” 

Harry delves straight into the depths of the squarely-craggy trench, tilting his wings in minute adjustments to keep them away from the walls and their many implacements. As he levels out and begins the straight run down, a calming, familiar voice rings through his mind.

_ “Trust in your feelings, Harry,” _ cautions Remus.  _ “The Force will guide you.” _

With half a glance over each of his shoulders and a quick tap of his helmet, Harry is no less reassured to find his cockpit truly empty. He wonders if he’s losing it or if he really might be being haunted by the voice of a dead Jedi.

“We’re right behind you, Harry,” Bell says.

“We’re gonna hang back far enough to keep those fighters off your trail, though,” Weasley assures. “Are you absolutely sure you’ll manage to get out of here going at this speed?”

Harry laughs, though it’s not exactly humorous as the turrets and towers around the trench decide to activate and blast them mercilessly. “Don’t worry, it’ll be just like Beggar’s Canyon back home. In and out like a shot.”

“Yes, well… We seem to have upset them at the very least,” she replies.

Harry tilts his head in an unseeable gesture as he studies the path ahead. “It’s all right, I can see pretty much everything in front of us.”

“That exhaust must be bloody small,” Bell grumbles. “Can’t even see it on the scope.”

Harry doesn’t reply as he dodges in tiny fractions around the incoming mesh of green energy artillery. As abruptly as it had started the rain of fire stops, leaving the trench clear once more. Harry reaches up to tip his targeting computer into place and hesitates, gaze straight ahead and yet not quite seeing. It’s only by instinct that he keeps his course steady, and after too long of a moment he manages to shake himself of his uncertainty and swing the computer down over his visor.

“Watch out,” he tells the others. “They’ll be here any moment.”

“What about that tower?” Bell asks.

“You worry about those fighters,  _ I’ll _ worry about the tower!”

“Incoming!” Weasley says. “Oh point three!”

Harry is knocked from his concentration on their nearing target by a sudden shudder jolting him bodily. “Artoo!” he says. “That stabiliser’s broken loose again. Can you fix it?”

Artoo whistles a long string that barely echoes up to him through the durasteel hull.

“I’m hit, I’m hit!” Weasley yelps. “Bloody  _ damnit! _ I can’t stay with you!”

“Go on, get free,” Harry tells her. “You’re only going to get shot at back there. Both of you, go.”

“I’m staying with you!” Bell insists. “I can draw their fire!”

“Draw your own death, you mean! Go!”

“Sorry, Potter,” Weasley says. Harry risks a blink of a glance over his shoulder and notes with satisfaction that both she and Bell are rising out of the trench. He turns back to the computer and, once again, hesitates.

_ “Use the Force, Harry,” _ says Remus’ hazy voice again.  _ “Harry, let go. Trust in the Force to guide you.” _

Harry wavers. The string of digits at the bottom of the targeting display tick down rapidly, and he turns back to the computer’s sight, only to be interrupted once again.

_ “Trust me, Harry.” _

Decisiveness blossoms in his chest like the clean, fresh air after a sandstorm. He turns his full attention back to his viewport in time to dodge a bright burst of green from one of the pursuing TIEs. He knocks the switch to the computer and stows it away, taking the briefest of moments to close his eyes and breathe the anxiety and tension from his body.

“Red Five, Red Five, is everything all right?” comes through from command, loud over the chatter Harry’s otherwise been ignoring. “Your targeting computer’s been deactivated.”

“I’m fine,” Harry replies easily. He can almost see the exhaust port up ahead. More fire concentrates on the back of his fighter, and with a jolt and a shrill scream from a malfunctioning Artoo, he knows he doesn’t have much time left. He curses the trench for just how bloody long it is.

More Imperial fire bursts around him, but this time it’s… It’s wild. He can see in the reflection of his cockpit windows that at least one of the fighters has crashed—one less thing to think about overall. Without any more warning than he got for the sudden intervention, a loud whoop of glee ricochets down the com line.

“Gottem!” a new voice cries, smug and satisfied. 

“Woohoo!” yells out Ginevra Weasley. “Let’s go, Team Weasley!”

“I’ve got you, Potter!” says the unexpected and more than welcome voice of George Weasley down the line. “Let’s blow this thing and go home!”

Above Harry, the  _ Millennium Falcon _ swoops low over the entrenchment. All three fighters have disappeared from view, and Harry is practically on top of the exhaust. One more slip of a calming breath and Harry’s thumb presses down hard on the trigger, the fighter beneath him jolting with the drop in weight as the torpedoes are released and rushing with exhilaration as Harry clears the end of the trench and shoots back up into clear space.

“Torpedoes away!” he reports. In his ear, numerous others, grounded or in the air, shout for victory.

“You did it!” Wood cries amidst his team’s incoherent sobs of relief. “You did it! They went straight in!”

“Nice shot, Potter!” congratulate Pucey and Blue Three’s Egwu.

“Bloody brilliant!” George announces. Harry almost laughs at the way he has to shout over Chewbacca’s wailing. “That was bloody  _ brilliant, _ Harry!” Below them, a telling seismic wave ripples up and through their ships, jostling them farther away from the surface like a tailwind. “Come on, let’s go home!”

“I’m glad you were here to see it,” Harry agrees, smiling into his com. He wheels upwards and falls easily into position behind Wood, overly conscious of the gap where Alicia Spinnet should by all rights be flying home with them. The trios of Green and Yellow Squadron close in around them, the last pair of Blues bringing up the rear and the  _ Falcon _ soaring high overhead as they make the desperate dash back to the overspilling girth of Yavin. 

*** * ***

An ecstatic, adrenaline-pumped crowd of technicians, pilots, friends and family swirled gleefully amongst every fighter docked once more in the hangar. Last in, Harry leaps from his cockpit to join the festivities with wild abandon and joy, not at all anticipating to jump straight into the arms of one very enthusiastic Wookie.

“Chewie!” he yelps. “Chewie! It’s you!”

“You did it!” comes a shout through the parting crowd. “Goodness, Harry, you did it!  _ You did it!” _

The white-robed form of Princess Hermione sprints from the throng and nigh-on knocks him straight to the ground when she collides with him. Her arms coil around his neck and squeeze tightly, and he is only just about tall enough in his excitement to pick her up by the waist and spin her round.

“Careful, Your Highness, you wouldn’t want to kill him with kindness now, would you?”

Hermione disengages from Harry just long enough to wrap her arms around a rather shocked looking George Weasley instead.

“You’re right,” she says, grinning between them. “Not after he just saved us all!” She leans back and thumps him heartily on the chest before all but throwing him towards Harry. “Go on, then!”

“You came back,” is all Harry can think to say, stepping into his friend’s space and clasping both of his shoulders tightly. “I knew you would! I knew it!”

“Yeah, well,” George says, his hands falling in a very practised casual manner to Harry’s waist. “Couldn’t just leave a young farm boy like yourself to go and get caught up in all that without me now, could I?”

“You tried,” Harry teases, pulling him just fractionally closer. “I’d be space dust if it weren’t for you and Chewie.”

“Well, you know me. I thought to myself, hold on, Potter’s going in there to take the victory and all the credit by himself! Now, I couldn’t let you do that.”

Harry laughs and knocks his forehead against George’s chest, dislodging his glasses slightly. “Course not, Solo-Weasley. But I’m glad. We did it together.”

“All of us,” George agrees warmly. He nudges Harry back to look down at him properly. “You’re all right now, yeah?”

Harry smiles stupidly, looking down at his flight suit and then back up into handsome brown eyes and tall cheekbones. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!! I hope it was entertaining (and also that I did both star wars and our beloved characters justice).  
> Don't be afraid to chat to me any time :)

**Author's Note:**

> Come chat with me over on [tumblr!](https://silverxsakura.tumblr.com/)


End file.
